The horizontal bars in the Volume Map give a graphic representation of the fragmentation of your volume. The Volume Map displays information for a single volume at a time. The volume identified in the label and tab at the top of the screen is the volume shown in the Volume Map.
Note: Due to the different performance characteristics of Solid State Drives (SSD), the information shown in the Volume Map for volumes processed with the HyperFast SSD optimizer differs from that shown for standard hard disk drives.
You can choose between views representing either the degree of fragmentation as it relates to file performance or the file structure on the volume. You can switch between these two views with the Volume Map view: option shown at the top of the Volume Map tab.
The File Performance view shows the fragmentation on your volume with an emphasis on the performance impact of that fragmentation. In this view, a file is shown as fragmented only if that fragmentation is affecting the performance of your computer.
The File Structure view shows additional detail, including the paging file (if it exists) and other system files such as the MFT on NTFS volumes. It also shows all the fragmentation (even fragmented file that are not affecting your system’s performance).
After running a manual analysis or defragmentation job, the horizontal bars in the Volume Map give a graphic representation of the fragmentation of your volume. The colors of the display indicate the type and condition of the data on your volume. The colors represent different aspects of your volume when you are viewing the two different Volume Map views available.
When the File Performance view is displayed, the colors available are:
Dark blue areas show high-performing files and folders.
Red areas show low-performing files and folders.
Pink areas show low-performing system files.
White areas show free space on the volume.
Green/White striped areas show space on the volume reserved for expansion of the MFT. This space is reserved when a volume is formatted, and cannot be used by applications, including Diskeeper. However, the operating system will write files to this area when the volume becomes extremely full and no other free space is available. Windows provides the capability for Diskeeper to move files out of this reserved area, but does not allow Diskeeper to move files into it. These areas appear only on NTFS volumes.
When the File Structure view is displayed, the colors available are:
Dark blue areas show contiguous (non-fragmented) files.
Red areas show fragmented files and directory folders.
Yellow areas show the paging file if it exists on the volume.
Green areas show unmovable system files. Green areas primarily show the Master File Table (MFT), as well as several other unmovable files. These files cannot be moved safely by Diskeeper (or any other defragmenter), except at boot-time. Keep in mind that, although these areas are referred to as "system files", these are not the files that make up the operating system (which Diskeeper can successfully defragment in the Manual or Automatic Defragmentation modes). Instead, they make up the NTFS file system. The green areas of the display appear only on NTFS volumes.
White areas show free space on the volume.
Green/White striped areas represent space that is reserved for system files..
Light blue areas show the defragmented directory folders on the volume (and their fragments).
Note: When the Terabyte Volume Engine (TVE) or Titan Defrag Engine is being used to defragment a volume, the graphic display usually shown in the Volume Map tab is replaced with numerical data showing the progress of the defragmentation operation. This reduction in system resource usage pays off in lower CPU consumption and faster defragmentation of very large volumes. Click here for more information.
You can also save the Volume Map (as a bitmap file) or print it by using the respective buttons on the Volume Map tab.
Solid state drives are subject to different performance issues than hard disk drives. Because of this, the Volume Map tab display for SSD volumes is different from that shown for hard disk drive volumes.
For SSD volumes, the volume map shows only the optimized (blue) and non-optimized (red) regions on the disk. The non-optimized regions include the low performing free spaces and fragments (of both files and directories). The performance characteristics of files and free spaces are determined based on the number of free space or file fragments, the size of these fragments, and other proprietary metrics.
Note that the low performing free spaces, files and directories will not necessarily be reduced to zero. Depending on the contents of the volume (total free space, free space fragmentation, file fragmentation) and its layout, an evaluation is made whether Diskeeper (or HyperFast) needs to run, and if so, attempts are made to consolidate as much free space as possible and defragment any low performing files and directories to improve the performance. If the free space on the volume has already been consolidated to within a certain percentage of the total free space, this is considered a significant performance gain, and no additional processing to consolidate remaining low performing free spaces is done.
Attempts are made to improve the performance on a volume if:
low performing fragments are greater than a certain percentage of the total file fragments on the volume or
there is badly fragmented file(s) on the volume or
consolidated free spaces are not a certain percentage of the total free space on the volume