Virtual Defrag and Shrink

[obeechi]

I made a fresh clone of my hard drive. Then opened up my VM (Vista using Fusion), ran Diskeeper in the VM, then shut down the VM and used to vdiskmanager GUI to run a virtual defrag. After that I booted up the VM and used VMTools to shrink. Next I plan to use iDefrag to defrag the internal drive of my MacBook Pro (the only reason I haven't yet is that my fans were not working and temps were 90 ºC, and within iDefrag there is an option to cease defragging whenever temps get too hot and the default is set for, I think, 55 ºC. So my question is, when running Smart Update, does defragging files between clones, cause SuperDuper to clone the drive so its clone is in the same state of defragmentation, or, does it simply make copies of whatever you've added or changed to a file, without regard to the level of defragmentation.

(A similar question could be asked for DiskWarrior, are the changes to the Directory reflected in the clone for changes made inbetween Smart Updates?)

[dnanian]

We copy file-by-file, so the fragmentation levels are not maintained.

[obeechi]

So if you have cloned a fragmented drive, and then defrag the drive, then you should consider making a fresh clone of the drive (especially if it was highly fragmented)? To do this you would have to disable Smart Update. Is this correct?

[dnanian]

There's no need - your backup doesn't really need to be defragmented.

[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.

[dnanian]

Performance might be enhanced somewhat when running from the backup, sure, but it's not worth the wear and tear on the drive to gain that performance improvement in the rare case that you're running from the backup.

[obeechi]

Well thats a pragmatic perspective. The only problem I can see with this, is if your internal hard drive gets too full. You may have been steadily maintaining all three levels of defraging (with the assumed use of virtual software), and then when you're hard drive dies, there isn't sufficient available space to run the defraging in all three levels and shrinking, in either the external drive, or the new internal drive. The solution, I think, would be to use 2GB splits (I do this in Fusion, not sure about Parallels), not let you hard drive get too jammed up, and, possibly, to have a either a larger sized external drive for the clone or else for the newer internal drive. But this thinking, or concern of mine, isn't really taking into account the defraging that takes place naturally upon a restore (not sure that all three levels of defraging are replicated upon the restore, and don't know if an shrinking, or equivalent, occurs during a restore)

[dnanian]

If your drive becomes that full, obeechi, you have a much bigger problem than fragmentation... I really think your concern here is misplaced.

[obeechi]

Oh, sorry maybe, but I did have problem with my Virtual Machine at one point. Those virtual files get really big, and I wasn't running 2GB splits, so I had to move everything over to a bigger external drive, defrag there, shrink, convert to 2GB splits. If anything I have more software now, but more available space. Though I did delete my bootcamp partition (whereas at one point I was running both a pure VM and bootcamp). So yeah, I get little paranoid - can't allocate that much time to things like that when I'm in the buzy period with my work.