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MKNTFS(8) System Manager's Manual MKNTFS(8)

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 sec‐
tor-size ] [ -T ] [ -U ] [ -V ] [ -v ] [ -z mft-zone-multiplier ] [ --debug ] device [ num‐
ber-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 sec‐
tor-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 at‐
tempts 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 mas‐
ter 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 re‐
quired during operation of the NTFS driver but choosing a good value will reduce frag‐
mentation. 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 index‐
ing 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 map‐
ping of lower case characters to upper case ones, as needed to sort file names in directo‐
ries. 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 AT lists.net

AUTHORS
mkntfs was written by Anton Altaparmakov, Richard Russon, Erik Sornes and Szabolcs Szakac‐
sits. 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/