The FAT file system does not support sparse files. They were added in
NTFS, in the Windows 2000 timeframe, to my recollection.
Don't try to install NTFS on a floppy.
Grant Edwards wrote:
On 2009-03-31, Dave Angel <da...@ieee.org> wrote:
I wrote a tiny DOS program called resize that simply did a
seek out to a (user specified) point, and wrote zero bytes.
One (documented) side effect of DOS was that writing zero
bytes would truncate the file at that point. But it also
worked to extend the file to that point without writing any
actual data. The net effect was that it adjusted the FAT
table, and none of the data. It was used frequently for file
recovery, unformatting, etc. And it was very fast.
Unfortunately, although the program still ran under NT (which includes
Win 2000, XP, ...), the security system insists on zeroing all the
intervening sectors, which takes much time, obviously.
Why would it even _allocate_ intevening sectors? That's pretty
brain-dead.
Is there a way to create a file to big withouth actually writing
anything in python (just give me the garbage that is already on the
disk)?
No. That would be a monstrous security hole.
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