Disk Defragmenter window

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Disk Defragmenter window

The Disk Defragmenter window consists of two main areas. The upper portion lists the volumes on the local computer. The lower portion displays a graphical representation of the amount of fragmentation on the volume in colored horizontal displays called Estimated disk usage before defragmentation and Estimated disk usage after defragmentation.

Each bar under Estimated disk usage before defragmentation and Estimated disk usage after defragmentation represents a grouping of dozens or even hundreds of clusters, depending on the size of the volume and the cluster. The displays are not large enough to depict each disk cluster in a volume as a vertical colored bar.

Disk Defragmenter does not attempt to consolidate all of the free space on a volume. Although free space fragmented into hundreds of pieces adversely affects performance, free space split into a few pieces does not. Having all of the free space consolidated in a single location provides very little performance benefit. Because fragmented files, contiguous files, files that cannot be relocated from their current positions on the disk (unmovable files), and free space can all reside in the same group of clusters, the color of each vertical bar is determined by the following rules:

Color	Description
Red	Most of the clusters are part of a fragmented file.
Blue	Most of the clusters are contiguous files with clusters in the group that contain only free space and contiguous clusters.
Green	Most of the clusters are part of a file that cannot be moved from its current location. On volumes formatted using the file allocation table (FAT), FAT32, or NTFS file system, the green areas typically represent paging files, which are also called swap files. On volumes formatted using the NTFS file system, however, they may also represent space used by the NTFS Change journal and the NTFS log file.
White	Most of the clusters are free space and contiguous clusters.

By comparing Estimated disk usage before defragmentation to Estimated disk usage after defragmentation, you can view the improvement in your volume after defragmenting it. The display shows less detail than the reports, so if you compare the results, you might notice discrepancies. For precise, numerical figures, see Analysis and defragmentation reports.

For step-by-step instructions describing how to analyze or defragment a volume, see Analyze a volume and Defragment a volume.