Windows 7: Defrag (heavy) external hard drive or re-format

Hi, I carry out a regular defrag of my C drive and external hard drive regularly about once a month. The C drive is only ever around 5% fragmented but the EHD is around 30% each time.
Would I be better to delete the back-ups I have, re-format the EHD and then start with new back-ups again ?



Presumably transferring the data across to my C drive before re-formatting the EHD may help to ensure no data loss but would defeat the object, leaving fragmented files to copy back again after re-formatting?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

In my experience any type of Backup, made with any Backup Program, tend to be fragmented. Not sure why. I don't ever Defrag the drive I use for my backup images. Even though I use that external for other file backups. Why bother. It's not like you are accessing that drive over and over like an Internal drive that you have files used everyday.

The purpose of a defrag is to put thing in the proper place for speed of access on a hard drive. The fact that you don't access the backup that often, hopefully. Their is no reason to defrag a backup. If you ever have to use the backup and do. After everything works as it should then do the defrag.