en Passant

I ran into an occurrence where I needed to create a really big file. I was having an issue with a backup procedure failing at only 16gb. After extensive troubleshooting, I thougth that maybe the issue was with the hard drive. The backup solution would reach the 18gb mark and fail due to some inconsistency.

So, where I can I find a big file?

1. Copy an existing large file off another server or workstation - great, but all the large files are open and I didn't want to shut something down.
2. Create one using smaller files. Sure, but how do you tack them together? ZIP would work, but that tends to make binaries smaller.
3. Finally create one. Heck, I created the following script to write random characters out until it reached the final size.

My first few versions of the script failed miserably. Well, they worked but it took FOREVER. 1% created after 10 minutes. I'd still be waiting for this file to create the 16 hrs later. I modified the script to include hard returns into the string. This decreased my total time down from 16hrs to about 5 minutes to create a 20gb file.

The final size of the file is not hard set.
Change this value, to increase or decrease the total gigabyte of the file.

Also, adjust the final location of the file. Just make sure you don't fill up the hard drive you write to. I don't check free space on the destination. I commented out the code to allow writing to a virtual mount point.

Happy Testing!