Ubuntu Manpage: mkntfs - create an NTFS file system

Provided by: ntfs-3g_2022.10.3-1.2ubuntu3_amd64

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 sectors 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 2097152 bytes (2MB) 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 or the
value is oversized, a default of 0 is used. The partition is usable despite a wrong
value, however note that a correct 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.

KNOWN ISSUES

       When applying chkdsk to a file system, it sometimes throws a warning "Correcting errors in
       the  uppercase  file."  The  uppercase file is created while formatting and it defines the
       mapping of lower case  characters to upper case ones, as needed  to  sort  file  names  in
       directories.  The  warning means that the uppercase file defined on the file system is not
       the same as the one used by the Windows OS on which chkdsk is running, and this may happen
       because  newer versions of Windows take into account new characters defined by the Unicode
       consortium.

       Currently, mkntfs creates the uppercase table so that no  warning  is  thrown  by  Windows
       Vista,  Windows  7  or Windows 8. A warning may be thrown by other Windows versions, or if
       chkdsk is applied in succession on different Windows versions.

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:
       https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g/wiki/