Fastest way to write huge data in text file Java

You might try removing the BufferedWriter and just using the FileWriter directly. On a modern system there's a good chance you're just writing to the drive's cache memory anyway.

It takes me in the range of 4-5 seconds to write 175MB (4 million strings) -- this is on a dual-core 2.4GHz Dell running Windows XP with an 80GB, 7200-RPM Hitachi disk.

Can you isolate how much of the time is record retrieval and how much is file writing?

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class FileWritingPerfTest {
    

private static final int ITERATIONS = 5;
private static final double MEG = (Math.pow(1024, 2));
private static final int RECORD_COUNT = 4000000;
private static final String RECORD = "Help I am trapped in a fortune cookie factory\n";
private static final int RECSIZE = RECORD.getBytes().length;

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    List<String> records = new ArrayList<String>(RECORD_COUNT);
    int size = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < RECORD_COUNT; i++) {
        records.add(RECORD);
        size += RECSIZE;
    }
    System.out.println(records.size() + " 'records'");
    System.out.println(size / MEG + " MB");
    
    for (int i = 0; i < ITERATIONS; i++) {
        System.out.println("\nIteration " + i);
        
        writeRaw(records);
        writeBuffered(records, 8192);
        writeBuffered(records, (int) MEG);
        writeBuffered(records, 4 * (int) MEG);
    }
}

private static void writeRaw(List<String> records) throws IOException {
    File file = File.createTempFile("foo", ".txt");
    try {
        FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(file);
        System.out.print("Writing raw... ");
        write(records, writer);
    } finally {
        // comment this out if you want to inspect the files afterward
        file.delete();
    }
}

private static void writeBuffered(List<String> records, int bufSize) throws IOException {
    File file = File.createTempFile("foo", ".txt");
    try {
        FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(file);
        BufferedWriter bufferedWriter = new BufferedWriter(writer, bufSize);
    
        System.out.print("Writing buffered (buffer size: " + bufSize + ")... ");
        write(records, bufferedWriter);
    } finally {
        // comment this out if you want to inspect the files afterward
        file.delete();
    }
}

private static void write(List<String> records, Writer writer) throws IOException {
    long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for (String record: records) {
        writer.write(record);
    }
    // writer.flush(); // close() should take care of this
    writer.close(); 
    long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println((end - start) / 1000f + " seconds");
}
}

Only for the sake of statistics:

The machine is old Dell with new SSD

CPU: Intel Pentium D 2,8 Ghz

SSD: Patriot Inferno 120GB SSD

4000000 'records'
175.47607421875 MB

Iteration 0
Writing raw... 3.547 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 8192)... 2.625 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 1048576)... 2.203 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 4194304)... 2.312 seconds

Iteration 1
Writing raw... 2.922 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 8192)... 2.406 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 1048576)... 2.015 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 4194304)... 2.282 seconds

Iteration 2
Writing raw... 2.828 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 8192)... 2.109 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 1048576)... 2.078 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 4194304)... 2.015 seconds

Iteration 3
Writing raw... 3.187 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 8192)... 2.109 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 1048576)... 2.094 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 4194304)... 2.031 seconds

Iteration 4
Writing raw... 3.093 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 8192)... 2.141 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 1048576)... 2.063 seconds
Writing buffered (buffer size: 4194304)... 2.016 seconds

As we can see the raw method is slower the buffered.

try memory mapped files (takes 300 m/s to write 174MB in my m/c, core 2 duo, 2.5GB RAM) :

byte[] buffer = "Help I am trapped in a fortune cookie factory\n".getBytes();
int number_of_lines = 400000;

FileChannel rwChannel = new RandomAccessFile("textfile.txt", "rw").getChannel();
ByteBuffer wrBuf = rwChannel.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_WRITE, 0, buffer.length * number_of_lines);
for (int i = 0; i < number_of_lines; i++)
{
    wrBuf.put(buffer);
}
rwChannel.close();