Introduction: Quickly Flood a Windows Volume

Hello and Welcome to my first Instructable.

This Instructable describes the a reusable way to flood a Windows Volume.

A Volume can be your local C: drive, but can be a USB disk or Network share as well.

Why flood a windows volume?

I don't know... maybe :

  1. you want to overwrite deleted files without formatting your entire volume.
  2. you want to check the maximum amount of network space your network administrator has given you.
  3. you want to raise a windows disk error for testing purposes.
  4. I need a subject for an Instructable...

Step 1: Choose Your Volume

In this example I dempnstrate the flooding of volume F: ( my USB drive).

Step 2: Create Your Script

  1. Start a command prompt by pressing both : Windows key + R
  2. Type in CMD
  3. press Enter
  4. Now your in the windows command prompt
  5. type in F:
  6. press Enter
  7. type in cd\
  8. press Enter
  9. if you also have a volume F: your command prompt should look like F:\> . If the system says something like "The system cannot find the drive specified." you probably don't have a writable F:\ volume

Step 3: Create Your Script

  1. Now you're in F:\> you can create a script file by typing: echo ::>bigfile10.cmd
  2. and pressing Enter.
  3. If no error messages are thrown back at you, you can open bigfile.cmd by typing: notepad bigfile10.cmd
  4. and pressing Enter again
  5. Notepad has opened bigfile10.cmd which has only the Characters :: in it.
  6. Type the above text in the file
  7. When your're confident enough that you copied the text correct you can save the file by pressing Ctrl + S
  8. You are almost done.

Step 4: Running Your Script

To run your script just go to windows explorer and double click F:\bigfile10.cmd.

A fast growing new file called bigfile10.txt will pop-up on volume F:

Over time (depending on free disk space and disk wite speed) the free space on volume F: will become 0 bytes.

Step 5: Next...

If you use this script to overwrite deleted files don't forget to empty your recycle bin before running the script.

You also can replace the ¬ with U, and save your script as bigfile01.cmd.

the character ¬ writes 10101010 to the disk and U writes 01010101 to the disk.

simply delete bigfile10.txt when you get tired of windows error messages.

Tip! You can zip the file bigfile10.txt. You can use this zip file on Mac and Linux machines ;)