Yes, you *can* fill up your hard drive with zero size files

[qubit]

That's fill up as in no more room to store anything else on the drive that only contains zero size files. Can you figure out how and why before you watch the video?

 

[Jetster]

Isn't that what security (Hillary) software does. To wipe a dive

 

[dorsetknob]

Mbr ?

 

[64K]

I thought it had something to do with using up the allocated directory space on the drive but I didn't know that the directory could use more than a certain amount of drive space and fill up the entire drive.

btw He's got some old computers on the desk behind him. Cool.

 

[qubit]

btw He's got some old computers on the desk behind him. Cool.

Yeah, did you see that the Archimedes had twin floppy drives?! I've never seen that configuration in real life. It's always one floppy and one HDD.

 

[R-T-B]

mft. Inodes have to be listed somewhere.

 

[newtekie1]

Didn't watch it, but I'm guessing the issues is the sector size. If you have 4kb sectors, that means a 0 size file will still actually take up 4kb on the disk.

Edit: Just watched it. Damn, didn't think about the file table.

 

[Aquinus]

That's fill up as in no more room to store anything else on the drive that only contains zero size files. Can you figure out how and why before you watch the video?

That's not hard. Every file takes up at least the minimize block size in the file system. Just write a bunch of "empty" files (which take up at least one block,) and the file system will be full.

To get around that, you would need an index of empty files but that even could be abused and could (eventually,) fill storage. In fact, storing anything will take storage.

Hit me with something harder.

 

[qubit]

Hit me with something harder.

I've got a rubber mallet?

No, the reason it fills up isn't necessarily because these empty files take up a minimum space on the HDD, since they really can take 0 blocks, depending on the design of the file system. In short, it's because the meta data describing them has to be stored somewhere and that's in the filing system itself, which in the video describes the entries within it as a type of file.

Edit: Just watched it. Damn, didn't think about the file table.

Gotcha!

 

[erocker]

Didn't watch it, but I'm guessing the issues is the sector size. If you have 4kb sectors, that means a 0 size file will still actually take up 4kb on the disk.

Edit: Just watched it. Damn, didn't think about the file table.

Lol, This was exactly my progression through things as well.

 

[R-T-B]

I got it right ahead of you guys.

MFT=Master File Table.

Do I get a cookie.

 

[dorsetknob]

 

[Aquinus]

No, the reason it fills up isn't necessarily because these empty files take up a minimum space on the HDD, since they really can take 0 blocks, depending on the design of the file system. In short, it's because the meta data describing them has to be stored somewhere and that's in the filing system itself, which in the video describes the entries within it as a type of file.

...and you're point? Either way data about the file in some was is stored to the disk in some way. You're filling it up with something. Something clearly keeps track of the block and file. Please accept my apologizes for not being more specific, smart ass.

 

[qubit]

...and you're point? Either way data about the file in some was is stored to the disk in some way. You're filling it up with something. Something clearly keeps track of the block and file. Please accept my apologizes for not being more specific, smart ass.

I wasn't being a smartass. Less of the attitude, thanks.

 

[r9]

That's fill up as in no more room to store anything else on the drive that only contains zero size files. Can you figure out how and why before you watch the video?

Just saving the file creates entry in the partition table that takes space even the file it self its zero bytes.
Enough of those I guess will fill the drive.
Let me know if I'm right or wrong. Too lazy to watch the video. lol

 

[qubit]

Just saving the file creates entry in the partition table that takes space even the file it self its zero bytes.
Enough of those I guess will fill the drive.
Let me know if I'm right or wrong. Too lazy to watch the video. lol

Yes, you're right, Mr Lazybones.

It's the meta data about the file which still takes space, of course.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

That's fill up as in no more room to store anything else on the drive that only contains zero size files. Can you figure out how and why before you watch the video?

Simple: Every file created creates an entry in the file system (contains the name of the file, date created, date modified, who its parent directory is, what sectors the data resides in, etc.).

Applications usually have small files packed into archives to cut back on the file system overhead as well as improve access times. A directory full of lots of little files can actually occupy more space in terms of file system than actual data each file contains.


Edit: Terraria is an example of a game with a lot of file system overhead due to having over 9000 files and a lot of them <1 KiB:

Note the difference between "Size" (content data) versus "Size on disk" (content data + NTFS overhead). ~6 MiB of file metadata.

 

[Drone]

There's a good analogy to 'fill up hard drive with zero size files' in geometry. If you take a point it's a 0D object. It has no width/length, but if you take a line, 1D object, - it's a set of points, but line does have a length.

 

[Aquinus]

...and all that time I thought that file names and attributes got stored in the nether. Glad we cleared that up.