In Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2), you'll find a handy new tool called File Server Resource Manager (FSRM), which is a Microsoft Management-Console (MMC) plug-in. As Mike Otey explains in "New Features in Windows Server 2003 R2" (May 2006, InstantDoc ID 49750), FSRM lets you create hard or soft quotas to limit the space allowed for a volume or folder and notify users when the quota limits are exceeded. You can also create filters that restrict users from saving files with certain extensions.
Using FSRM, I create quota management templates, then apply those templates to folders. To ensure that the templates work properly, I typically test them by coping 100 MB of files from other folders. Not surprisingly, copying 100 MB of files is time-consuming. Fortunately, there's another handy tool called fsutil.exe that lets you create a file of any size on the fly.
You can find fsutil.exe in the C:\Windows\System32 folder in Windows 2003 and Windows XP. The syntax to create a file is
fsutil file createnew FileName Lengthwhere FileName is the pathname to the file you want to create and Length is the target size of that file. (Although this command appears on several lines here, you would enter it on one line in the command-shell window.) Note that you need to specify the target size in kilobytes. So, for example, to create a 100 MB file named testfile in the C:\r2testquotas folder, you'd run the command
fsutil file createnew C:\r2testquotas\testfile.txt 1ØØØ
With fsutil.exe, you can perform many other file system tasks from the command line. For more information about this tool, go to http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil.mspx.
—James Lim
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