Defragging image and/or backup files ?

Do not defrag System Image. This may rearrange files and will compress the files. Not a good thing when you go to use the images. It may have trouble sorting and uncompressing the files on retore.
Why chance it.
Back-up files I would leave alone. Defrag your OS before creating back up and you should be good.

Mike

Hopalong X said:

Back-up files I would leave alone. Defrag your OS before creating back up and you should be good.

Mike

Excellent suggestion!

~Maxx~

Defrag your OS before imaging - yes, a good practice. I always do.

Defragging the image-Is it harmful? My answer is a "no" based on my practice.

When I defrag the partition that contains the images, I do not do anything specific to exclude the image files. They also get defragmented and I have had no problems with such defragged images during restore.

Try it out yourself. Take an image. Keep the original image and also a copy of the image that is defragmented. Restore with the defragmented image.( In case of any problem, you have the original to your rescue.)

Defragging the image-Is it good? Yes. - depending on the state of partition on which you write the image. If that partition is already fragmented, the image also may be fragmented and not contiguous. Defragmenting can make all the fragments contiguous and to that extent your restore will be faster. ( you may or may not perceive it in practice since it may be minimal) (I use Perfect Disk 11 Pro and run it with Smart Placement)

I can't even imagine how long it would take to defragment all of the six 24+ GB System Images that I keep on inert disk drives which represented different states of my Win 7 x64 computer since it was new in that it seems to get hung up forever just when the Defragmenter happens upon a single 3-4 GB video file.

~Maxx~

First time defragmentation may take more time. But once done as a routine, with a frequency depending upon one's usage, subsequent defragmenting will take less time. In any case it is best done at night, when one goes to sleep.:)

So far, at no time has my Perfect Disk 11 stalled while dealing with large files -even with as large as 50GB BD ISO files.( I don't count on Window's built-in defragmenter when better performance and features are needed.)

I also hasten to add that since my disks/partitions almost always remain in the best defragmented state - even the external HDDs where all the backups and images remain locked - because of the routine, to start with itself the large files are written with least fragmentation.

When I was creating my multi-boot pendrive, the author of the multi-boot ISO software had recommended that "in case the bootable ISO does not boot from the pendrive, defragment the ISO image." Another pointer, that defragmenting the image helps.