Windows XP and DOS - Test the Speed of Batch Files By Creating Dummy Files

SUMMARY: The CREATFIL DOS command, available for Windows XP, can help test the speed of batch files and also how applications handle low hard drive space scenarios.

Your Windows XP DOS batch file may work great when processing small images, text files, and sound files. However, how well will it work with multi-megabyte and multi-gigabyte files?

Use the CREATFIL command to easily make dummy files that can be used to test the speed of your batch files and applications. According to Microsoft's help files, CREATFIL also works well to temporarily fill up your hard drive to see how well setup programs work in low disk space situations.

To use CREATFIL, you'll first need to download and install the Windows 2003 Resource Kit.

Here is the CREATFIL syntax:

creatfil FILENAME FILESIZE

* FILENAME can be any file of your choosing

* FILESIZE is the size of the dummy file in kilobytes (the default is 1024 kilobytes, or one megabyte)

For example, the following DOS command will create a dummy file called "nonsense" that takes up 3 megabytes of hard drive space.

C:\>creatfil nonsense 3096

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