writing large files quickly

[Grant Edwards]

On 2006-01-27, rbt <rbt at athop1.ath.vt.edu> wrote:

> I've been doing some file system benchmarking. In the process, I need to 
> create a large file to copy around to various drives. I'm creating the 
> file like this:
>
> fd = file('large_file.bin', 'wb')
> for x in xrange(409600000):
>      fd.write('0')
> fd.close()
>
> This takes a few minutes to do. How can I speed up the process?

Don't write so much data.

f = file('large_file.bin','wb')
f.seek(409600000-1)
f.write('\x00')
f.close()

That should be almost instantaneous in that the time required
for those 4 lines of code is neglgible compared to interpreter
startup and shutdown.

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