Defrag external HDD?

Used Acronis 8 to clone the internal HDD to an external HDD. I use the external HDD mainly as a backup to the internal HDD.

I use SyncBack to synchronize files between the two drives daily, so a lot of files transfer between the drives often. I turn on the external HDD only to use the SyncBack program, the rest of the time the drive is off.

I recently performed a fragmentation analysis on the external HDD and showed it to be over 14% fragmented.

Should I defragment the external HDD? I've read several horror stories about defragmenting an external HDD. Is there any benefit in defragging this drive, or should I just leave it well enough alone?

 

I have defragged both my maxtor 160 gig external, and a generic 80 gig external many a time, never had an issue.

 

Colemanguy,

Did you use windows built in defragger or a third party program?

 

Third party defrager all the time. Right now its diskeeper that i use.