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Defraging a disc with a clone on it?

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I'm using Acronis Home 2012

can I defrag the disc with the clone on it? Or does that damage the image?

Thanks!

Marty

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If you are referring to an actual copy (clone) of a hard disk, then no problem. If you are referring to a drive that contains full disk backup files (.tib) created by Acronis as backup image files, I wouldn't run defrag on that drive. You risk the chance of corrupting the backup files if they are tampered with. Normally this is not a problem, but why risk it. My personal opinion is to not perform defragmentation on a cloned hard drive, as it is of no value to do so, as you would not be using it currently. After you place the drive back into operation, the defrag could then be run after a complete backup is done to safeguard your data.

As a general rule of thumb, if you are going to perform defragmentation on a drive, it is best to perform some disk checking with the Windows chkdsk utility to scan for and repair any disk errors it finds before running a defragmentation. It is always a good idea to have a full backup before defragmentation to protect you from problems if the defragmentation process is interrupted by power failures, hard drive problems, computer issues, etc. Although defragmentation is very reliable nowadays, you can never be too careful when manuipulating data on your hard drives.