Defrag (heavy) external hard drive or re-format

[Andyonline]

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

 

[edwar]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

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.