[snip] > >What kind of program would actually benefit from sparse > files? And shouldn't > >it be the responsibility of that program to request them? > > IIRC, linux creates sparse files automatically when you do an lseek to > a position beyond EOF. I believe that Windows is similar. >
No, Windows does nothing like that. On Windows, sparse files are completely non-automatic: "Note: It is up to the application to maintain sparseness by writing zeros with FSCTL_SET_ZERO_DATA", sez the Platform docs. Even if you do WriteFile()s with all zeros on a sparse file, you are actually hitting the disk. > I would like to see a benchmark but I doubt there will be any > noticeable > difference. The only thing this patch will do AFAICS is set a bit somewhere in the guts of NTFS that will be pretty much ignored. I'm with Max, I don't see the benefit and can only imagine the consequences. -- Gary R. Van Sickle Braemar Inc. 11481 Rupp Dr. Burnsville, MN 55337
