Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!xylogics!transfer!crackers!m2c!umvlsi!dime!dime.cs.umass.edu!moss From: moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Reserving Space on Disk Message-ID: Date: 17 Jul 90 14:18:41 GMT References: <13422@ulysses.att.com> <836@mwtech.UUCP> <1990Jul17.032745.3807@eng.umd.edu> Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu Reply-To: moss@cs.umass.edu Organization: Dept of Comp and Info Sci, Univ of Mass (Amherst) Lines: 13 In-reply-to: stripes@eng.umd.edu's message of 17 Jul 90 03:27:45 GMT The real problem with writing a few bytes here and there is that it probably leaves holes in the file -- i.e., the space is not really allocated. Copying from /dev/zero might give the same problem (blocks of all zeroes not being stored). The person needed actual disk blocks allocated so that writes could proceed very quickly and not need to go through any block allocation. -- J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor Department of Computer and Information Science Lederle Graduate Research Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu