diff --git a/dotfiles-old/misc/spacer.sh b/dotfiles-old/misc/spacer.sh
index 07f31a0..f84b8f6 100755
--- a/dotfiles-old/misc/spacer.sh
+++ b/dotfiles-old/misc/spacer.sh
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 # creates an 8GB empty file in the root dir
 # that way when the alarm bells go off you can delete it to save a couple
 # minutes before the system really runs out of disk
+BS=512; COUNT=16777216 # 512 * 16777216 = 8GB
 ! [ -e /spacer.img ] || return 1 || exit 1
-dd if=/dev/zero bs=1K count=8M >spacer.img
-sudo mv ./spacer.img /spacer.img
+dd bs=$BS count=$COUNT </dev/zero >spacer.img
+$SUDO mv ./spacer.img /spacer.img