The Disk Map is displayed in the
Explorer bar when the Disk View tab is selected. It is located either at the top or at the bottom of the window, depending on the state of the Disk Map Location option (Main menu: View > Disk Map Location). The user can change the current location of the map with this option.
As the name infers, the Disk Map displays the layout of physical and logical disks. Physical disks are represented with rectangle bars that contain small-sized bars. These small-sized bars represent logical disks. Their color depends on the file system of the appropriate partition.
Large-sized bars display the following information about physical disks:
Small-sized bars display the following information about logical disks:
- Serial number In the DOS partitioning scheme, every hard disk and every partition has a 32-bit serial number represented by an 8-figure hexadecimal value. It is stored in the MBR and its value is assigned when the MBR sector is initialized by Microsoft standard disk managing tools, such as Windows Disk Administrator and the FDISK utility. In fact, a hard disk's serial number is not important for most operating systems and software. It is known that Windows NT, 2000 and XP store its value in the database of assigned drive letters. A partition's serial number is stored in its boot sector (in FAT16, FAT32 and NFTS file systems). Its value is assigned when the partition is formatted. It does not play an important role for most operating systems and software as well.,
- Drive letter,
- Total size,
- File system.
Furthermore, it is possible to estimate the used disk space by looking at the size of the bar's shaded area.
Disk Map is synchronized with the
Explorer bar. When the user selects a disk on the Disk Map the Explorer bar displays detailed information of the selected disk.
The user can click a large-sized bar to display information about the appropriate physical disk in the Explorer bar. A click on a small-sized bar will lead to displaying information about the appropriate logical disk.