Legend

Access Legend tab: On the Drive Map tab, the Legend tab is shown at the right side.

When you start an analysis of the drive or perform a defragmentation pass, the Drive Map shows the graphical display of the drive in colored blocks. These colored blocks are used to represent a file type. When you are defragmenting a drive the color of the blocks changes as the defragmentation process is performed. PerfectDisk displays the color of the blocks based on the color legends set for the file types shown in the Legend tab at the right side. You can also change the color legends of the file types by double-clicking the color block next to the file type.

The Legend tab shows two buttons: Reset Colors and Display file in Drive Map.

Browse for the file and then select the file. Click Open. The selected file is then located in the Drive Map and is blinked as shown below:

File Types Shown on the Legend Tab

When you are defragmenting a drive the color of blocks change as the defragmentation process is performed. PerfectDisk displays the color of the blocks based on the following file types.

Fragmented - Fragmented files are those files that are taking up space on your drive and degrading the performance of your machine. They are shaded in red color on the Drive Map.

The NTFS file system contains a file called the master file table, or MFT. There is at least one entry in the MFT for every file on an NTFS drive, including the MFT itself. All information about a file, including its size, time and date stamps, permissions, and data content, is stored either in MFT entries, or in space outside the MFT that is described by MFT entries.

As files are added to an NTFS drive, more entries are added to the MFT and the MFT increases in size. When files are deleted from an NTFS drive, their MFT entries are marked as free and may be reused. However, disk space that has been allocated for these entries is not reallocated, and the size of the MFT does not decrease.

MFT Zone - The space reserved by the operating system to allow for contiguous growth of the Master File Table (typically 12.5% of the drive). This is only found on NTFS formatted drives.

Metadata - Metadata is "data about data." It is the file system overhead, so to speak, that is used to keep track of everything about all of the files on the drive. Metadata tells what allocation units make up the data for a given file, what allocation units are free, what allocation units contain bad sectors, and so on. This is only found on NTFS formatted drives.

Excluded - These are blocks which are neither free space nor queriable files. Examples would be the pagefile, hibernate file, NTFS metadata, exclusively locked files, System Restore Points (Vista/2003/2008) as well as any user excluded files.

Rarely Modified - The files which are older than the Rarely Modified Age that is set in the Drive Properties screen.

Occasionally Modified - The remaining files which are between the Rarely Modified and Recently Modified Settings.

Recently Modified - The files which are newer than the Recently Modified Age that is set in the Drive Properties screen.

Boot - These are the files needed to boot your computer. Under Windows XP and Vista these are the boot files enumerated in the layout.ini file, which Windows updates every time you reboot your computer.