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.