Create a Large File from the Command Line or Disk Utility for Testing Purposes
Large empty files are often used for testing purposes during disk access tests, development, QA, zeroing out data, and scripting. Though it’s certainly not applicable to most users, it’s easy enough to do that anyone can try it out even if you don’t have a specific need.
We’ll cover three ways to quickly generate files of virtually any size, two will use the command line; one being operating system agnostic and the other MacOS and Mac OS X specific, and another more user friendly approach that utilizes the Disk Utility app native to Mac OS X.