[obeechi]

I don't follow this. It takes time to go through a defrag, and with Virtual Machines, there are three levels of defragging. This takes time. So are you telling me that this defragged state cannot be retained in the backup? Or is it simply irrelevant, because upon a restore, defragging is a natural byproduct (though I don't see it would be for within the Virtual Machine)? However, assuming one boots from the external, if its defragging is equal to the internal drive, then wouldn't performance be enhanced? There could, for example, be a lag time between when your internal drive dies, and you get it replaced, and in the meantime you'd have to use the bootable clone to get all your work done.