Defragmenting disks with Espionage protected folders

[triarius]

In running Diskwarrior on partitions that contain Espionage protected folders, I notice that they appear to be highly fragmented (30 to 60 percent). Is this real, or is this a side effect of the way Espionage operates?

If it is real fragmentation, do I have to remove the protected folders from Espionage before defragmenting the disk, or can I just defragment the disk leaving the folders protected?

Alternatively, can I leave the folders in Espionage but just unlock and/or disable them?

[zsolt]

Hello,

Espionage is using sparse bundle disk images to store protected files. Sparse bundle disk image is not one file, it is a collection of small files called stripes or bands packed in one OS X package. When changes to data in disk image happens (when you unlock the folder the disk image mounts and by adding/updating the files, you are updating the bands of disk image).

When the folder is locked, the disk image is unmounted and closed, sitting on your file system.
So I would say that you can safely run defragmentation of these files but to prevent Espionage kicking in, first lock all the folders and disable them in Espionage. Then run the defragmentation process. Once done, just enable the folders in Espionage and you are done.

If the backup is not set up in Espionage, and you have sufficient space on your disk to have all your protected folders copied, then I would advise you to set it up, you never know what can go wrong. Note that the backup will run the first time you unlock and then lock the protected folder. On the first run it will make a full copy of the data, so it might take some time, on subsequent runs it will copy only the differences, so it goes fast.

Let me know if you have further questions.

[triarius]

Thanks, that answers my question exactly. I do have backups turned on, more backup is always good.

[triarius]

I do have one other question: What about defragmenting the disk that has the Espionage backups on it?

[zsolt]

Espionage backup is just a copy of the disk image. The difference is only that this copy is never mounted, so you can run defragment at any time, even if the protected folders are open (as long as they are on a different disk than the backup)

Rgds
Zsolt

[triarius]

Great, thanks.

The more I use this software, the better I like it (and the more comfortable I get with it.)

[zsolt]

Glad to hear that, if any further question arises, just let me know.
Cheers
Zsolt