Acronis and defragging?

I read in a reputable computer magazine that one should be careful with Acronis (and disk imaging products) if you defrag your hard drive. While I am a newbie, the gist I got was that the image changes with defragging so that disk imaging may be a problematic way to backup your hard drive. Does this make sense?

p.s. I am contemplating buying Acronis from everything I have read. But, based on this forum, I am waiting for the newest version of Acronis before I purchase it.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Consider searching this forum for "defrag".

There's no problem, although it's really not necessary to defrag image files. It also helps to use a dedicated defrag utility like Diskeeper.

 

Thanks for your advice. I will do a search.

I think the gist of the article was not that you might defrag the image file but defrag your drive after you create the image file, and then try to create an image file thereafter.

 

Personally I would never defrag image files although I realise that's not the gist of your question. There is no issue with defragging a drive either before or after creating a TI image. If you are making a full image then defragging before creating the image will have no effect on image size. If you are making an incremental image then your image size may increase somewhat if you defrag before creating the incremental as defragging moves files around and so additional sectors will change and these will be included in the incremental. If you defrag after creating the image then the changes will be included in the next incremental so there is no benefit in deferring a defrag. Whether you defrag or not TI will create images that protect you from file corruptions and disk failure. Defrag is not something you should worry about doing as it will not cause problems with TI.