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Re: Create new files as sparse on NT systems. (2nd try)
- From: "Max Bowsher" <maxb at ukf dot net>
- To: "Vaclav Haisman" <V dot Haisman at sh dot cvut dot cz>,<cygwin-patches at cygwin dot com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 01:12:34 -0000
- Subject: Re: Create new files as sparse on NT systems. (2nd try)
- References: <20030219013337.V52168-100000@logout.sh.cvut.cz>
Vaclav Haisman wrote:
>> Could you do some tests, so we have more than conjecture to go on?
>>
>> What programs actually *benefit* from sparseness?
>
> My primary motivation to do this is that I use P2P sharing program
> called BitTorrent. This program is written in Python and I run it in
> Cygwin. This program first creates whole file that I want to download
> by writing very few bytes with long distances between them and then
> fills it as it downloads chunks of the file from various other peers.
> The creation of this file takes from tens of seconds to few minutes
> without this patch, depending on size of the file. But with this
> patch it takes about two seconds to create this almost empty file.
> The files I usually download are movies. I don't experience any extra
> slowness while playing such created files.
Well, why not have BitTorrent set the file as sparse?
Why should Cygwin do this for *all* files? - if it was universally
advantageous, I would imagine it would be on by default in Windows.
Max.