Forcing a "deep search" Time Machine backup (to catch all changes)

Time Machine normally depends upon the new, Leopard, file system event logs to know what to include in an incremental backup. But if there is a problem with a backup due to file system corruption or whatever, Time Machine may miss some files AND NOT CATCH THEM LATER when the subsequent backups happen, apparently because they are no longer marked as having been changed since the last backup.
If you have removed a corrupted file/directory or otherwise want to make sure Time Machine really does catch everything, you could of course erase the Time Machine disk and have it start over.
OR you could force a "deep search" backup. A deep search backup happens whenever Time Machine decides the file system event log can not be trusted. In that case Time Machine digs through the entire source file system to decide what to include in the next incremental backup. You will know this is happening because the "preparing" phase takes a long time (perhaps 20 minutes or so) even though the amount of data eventually backed up is not that big. The time of the preparing phase will probably be comparable to the time to do a Repair Permissions pass in Disk Utility. There is also a message added to the Console by the "backupd" process indicating it is also going "deep".
Well it turns out that one of the easiest ways to make Time Machine decide not to trust the file system event log is to boot from the Leopard install DVD. Apparently the event log is marked as non-trustable since a source external to the file system (the software running from the install DVD) may have altered it.
So boot from the install DVD and then immediately Restart from your main hard drive. The next incremental backup Time Machine does will be a "deep search" backup.
--Bob

BobP1776 wrote:
Well it turns out that one of the easiest ways to make Time Machine decide not to trust the file system event log is to boot from the Leopard install DVD. Apparently the event log is marked as non-trustable since a source external to the file system (the software running from the install DVD) may have altered it.
Thanks, this was very useful information to me this evening! I was puzzled that the TM backup of my daughter's MacBook was missing several changed files. I tried your "DVD trick", and it solved the problems!
Now the question is why Time Machine didn't understand that it should have done a deep traversal? It seems it has logged its own bug: The log says: "Avoided deep traversal due to exclusion list change". Indeed, I did change the exclusion list, as I wanted to add a portable external drive. I guess I should report this bug to Apple...

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