Can you defrag a drive with backup images on it?

I have never defraged an external drive that has ATI archives stored on it but recently Diskeeper for some reason was set to auto detect volumes and to continuously defrag any drives attached to the PC. This led to me having problems ejecting the drives and until I figured out what was causing this problem I had a heck of a time trying to comprehend what the H was going on. So has the defrag that Diskeeper was doing on the drive corrupting the images or should they still be OK? They mount without any problem but that does not necessarily mean that I can use them to restore my PC should the need arise.

Also, I was wondering if I should convert from FAT to NTFS? Seems like a logical thing to do given the size of theI have never defraged an external drive that has ATI archives stored on it but recently Diskeeper for some reason was set to auto detect volumes and to continuously defrag any drives attached to the PC. This led to me having problems ejecting the drives and until I figured out what was causing this problem I had a heck of a time trying to comprehend what the H was going on. So has the defrag that Diskeeper was doing on the drive corrupting the images or should they still be OK? They mount without any problem but that does not necessarily mean that I can use them to restore my PC should the need arise.

Also, I was wondering if I should convert from FAT to NTFS? Seems like a logical thing to do given the size of the backup files. backup files.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Don't know about change the file system. I wouldn't risk it, but someone else can chime in.

I have plenty of image files saved on my D drive that I defrag and I have never had any problem.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Thanks for the info, I feel much better now.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

You shouldn't defrag the drive you store the images on. It will not harm the images but you won't get any performance benefits and because the files are so large diskeeper will spend all of its time trying to defrag the drive. It isn't worth it.

You should convert from fat to ntfs. Ntfs is a lot better and less prone to errors than FAT.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Read the Windows Help file on your PC and get instructions on converting an FAT drive to NTFS without losing any of the files on the drive. Since NTFS is a journaling file system, it's less likely to get mucked up by a crash and such. And it supports much larger filesizes.

RE defragging, ATI finds backup files through the files system (ATI12/2009 uses an interanl database for location in the file system but it still uses the file system) -- so, it won't matter to ATI if the sector locations of the backup files are moved around by a defragger. ATI will still find all the relevent sectors because the files system can tell it where they are. So defragging won't harm the files.

But there is more to it than that. Since backup files are relatively large and very rarely if ever used, there is not much to be gained by defragging. Suppose you have 10GB backup file that is in 40 fragments. Defragmenting it so that it is one contiguous file might make a restore that will take, say 10 to 20 minutes, with the fragmented file take maybe a quarter or half second less if fully defragged. Small benefit and that's realised only if you actually use the file to restore, which is usually a very rare thing.

And yet, defragging such large files takes a very long time and puts a lot mileage on your hardisk -- it's thrash intensive.

So defragging backup files is harmless to the files yet generally imprudent. In fact, if you want to defrag a drive that has, among other things, backup files on it, you might want to exclude the .tib files from the defrag to save a lot of essentially wasted time and disk effort.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Thank you for the replies, much appreciated.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Yea this is true if you have a separate HD that you just have backup images on. What if you have backup images and tons of other data on a HD. Yea no real benifit in defragging the image files but a hugh benifit in keeping a data or Os disk defragged. You can't just choose Defrag the entire disk but not the image files.

Just my opinion.

If you have only/ mostly images - don't waste defragging.
If you have a disk with images and other data - keep it defragged.

 

Re: Can yoiu defrag a drive with backup images on it?

Actually if you have diskeeper you can.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

bgoodman4, you can convert FAT32 file system to NTFS without data loss using Microsoft convert.exe utility:

1. Click Start, click Programs, and then click Command Prompt
2. At the command prompt, type CONVERT [driveletter]: /FS:NTFS
3. Convert.exe will attempt to convert the partition to NTFS

See Microsoft KB article for more information.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Thank you.