NAME¶
mkntfs - create an NTFS file system
SYNOPSIS¶
mkntfs [
options]
device [
number-of-sectors]
mkntfs [
-C ] [
-c cluster-size ] [
-F ] [
-f ] [
-H heads ] [
-h ] [
-I ] [
-L
volume-label ] [
-l ] [
-n ] [
-p
part-start-sect ] [
-Q ] [
-q ] [
-S
sectors-per-track ] [
-s sector-size ] [
-T ] [
-U ] [
-V ] [
-v ] [
-z mft-zone-multiplier
] [
--debug ]
device [
number-of-sectors ]
DESCRIPTION¶
mkntfs is used to create an NTFS file system on a device (usually a disk
partition) or file.
device is the special file corresponding to the
device (e.g
/dev/hdXX).
number-of-sectors is the number of
blocks on the device. If omitted,
mkntfs automagically figures the file
system size.
OPTIONS¶
Below is a summary of all the options that
mkntfs accepts. Nearly all
options have two equivalent names. The short name is preceded by
- and
the long name is preceded by
--. Any single letter options, that don't
take an argument, can be combined into a single command, e.g.
-fv is
equivalent to
-f -v. Long named options can be abbreviated to any
unique prefix of their name.
Basic options¶
- -f, --fast, -Q, --quick
- Perform quick (fast) format. This will skip both zeroing of
the volume and bad sector checking.
- -L, --label STRING
- Set the volume label for the filesystem.
- -C, --enable-compression
- Enable compression on the volume.
- -n, --no-action
- Causes mkntfs to not actually create a filesystem,
but display what it would do if it were to create a filesystem. All steps
of the format are carried out except the actual writing to the
device.
Advanced options¶
- -c, --cluster-size BYTES
- Specify the size of clusters in bytes. Valid cluster size
values are powers of two, with at least 256, and at most 65536 bytes per
cluster. If omitted, mkntfs uses 4096 bytes as the default cluster
size.
Note that the default cluster size is set to be at least equal to the sector
size as a cluster cannot be smaller than a sector. Also, note that values
greater than 4096 have the side effect that compression is disabled on the
volume (due to limitations in the NTFS compression algorithm currently in
use by Windows).
- -s, --sector-size BYTES
- Specify the size of sectors in bytes. Valid sector size
values are 256, 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 bytes per sector. If omitted,
mkntfs attempts to determine the sector-size automatically
and if that fails a default of 512 bytes per sector is used.
- -p, --partition-start SECTOR
- Specify the partition start sector. The maximum is
4294967295 (2^32-1). If omitted, mkntfs attempts to determine
part-start-sect automatically and if that fails a default of 0 is
used. Note that part-start-sect is required for Windows to be able
to boot from the created volume.
- -H, --heads NUM
- Specify the number of heads. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff).
If omitted, mkntfs attempts to determine the number of heads
automatically and if that fails a default of 0 is used. Note that
heads is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created
volume.
- -S, --sectors-per-track NUM
- Specify the number of sectors per track. The maximum is
65535 (0xffff). If omitted, mkntfs attempts to determine the number
of sectors-per-track automatically and if that fails a default of 0
is used. Note that sectors-per-track is required for Windows to be
able to boot from the created volume.
- -z, --mft-zone-multiplier NUM
- Set the MFT zone multiplier, which determines the size of
the MFT zone to use on the volume. The MFT zone is the area at the
beginning of the volume reserved for the master file table (MFT), which
stores the on disk inodes (MFT records). It is noteworthy that small files
are stored entirely within the inode; thus, if you expect to use the
volume for storing large numbers of very small files, it is useful to set
the zone multiplier to a higher value. Note, that the MFT zone is resized
on the fly as required during operation of the NTFS driver but choosing a
good value will reduce fragmentation. Valid values are 1, 2, 3 and 4. The
values have the following meaning:
MFT zone |
MFT zone size |
multiplier |
(% of volume size) |
1 |
12.5% (default) |
2 |
25.0% |
3 |
37.5% |
4 |
50.0% |
- -T, --zero-time
- Fake the time to be 00:00:00 UTC, Jan 1, 1970 instead of
the current system time. This is only really useful for debugging
purposes.
- -U, --with-uuid
- Generate a random volume UUID.
- -I, --no-indexing
- Disable content indexing on the volume. (This is only
meaningful on Windows 2000 and later. Windows NT 4.0 and earlier ignore
this as they do not implement content indexing at all.)
- -F, --force
- Force mkntfs to run, even if the specified
device is not a block special device, or appears to be
mounted.
Output options¶
- -q, --quiet
- Quiet execution; only errors are written to stderr, no
output to stdout occurs at all. Useful if mkntfs is run in a
script.
- -v, --verbose
- Verbose execution.
- --debug
- Really verbose execution; includes the verbose output from
the -v option as well as additional output useful for debugging
mkntfs.
Help options¶
- -V, --version
- Print the version number of mkntfs and exit.
- -l, --license
- Print the licensing information of mkntfs and
exit.
- -h, --help
- Show a list of options with a brief description of each
one.
BUGS¶
If you find a bug please send an email describing the problem to the development
team:
ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net
AUTHORS¶
mkntfs was written by Anton Altaparmakov, Richard Russon, Erik Sornes and
Szabolcs Szakacsits. It was ported to ntfs-3g by Erik Larsson and Jean-Pierre
Andre.
AVAILABILITY¶
mkntfs is part of the
ntfs-3g package and is available from:
http://www.tuxera.com/community/
SEE ALSO¶
badblocks(8),
ntfsprogs(8)