How to make a file full of nothing, but make it appear really big?

[cw42]

I was wondering how I could create a file that does nothing, but can appear so-many MB/GB big. I was thinking a gigantic text file full of mumbo-jumbo? But that may take a little while to make.

 

[mordantmonkey]

hehe... someone thinking of doing a little anti-piracy?
think this would be a good way to support games you like. especially ones like oblivion, where (from what i hear) they haven't put any CD key in it and no hassling copy protection. yay for bethesda!

 

[CalvinHobbes]

I have a program somewhere that actually does this. The file contains nothing but the filesystem thinks it does. Not sure how large you can make the files.

 

[Jeff7]

Or else a simple Qbasic program that runs a loop with a counter that writes zeroes to a file for a specified number of times. No idea how big of a file it can support either though. Maybe C++ for larger file support.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Copy and paste a giant chunk of text. Paste it for like a minute. Copy and paste that. Rinse and repeat till a couple gigs.

 

[PingSpike]

Just do whateveryone else does and rename a porn file.

 

[KB]

Download a linux iso or other large file copy it several time then zip it into a large file.

 

[spyordie007]

Create a batch file:

:START
help >> foo.txt
GOTO START

Dumps the contents of the "help" screen to a text file repeativly, let it run and it will quickly consume a bunch of space...

Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break to stop it.

 

[spyordie007]

much quicker generator:

help >> foo.txt
:START
type foo.txt >> foo.txt
GOTO START

Uses the output you generate to build the file exponentially

 

[kamper]

grep something * > grep.txt

Make sure "something" matches at least once in your directory. Good way to grind your machine to near halt, if you ever want to do that, too.

But spyordie's is much more deliberate and efficient 😛

Also, with a little programming effort, you can open a file, seek to somewhere very far (multiple gigs?), write a single byte and the file is automatically that big. If your filesystem is smart enough, it will only allocate a few disc blocks instead of billions but the file will still look that big. Been too long since operating systems class to remember which filesystems have such brains.