mkntfs(1M) System Administration Commands mkntfs(1M)NAMEmkntfs - create an NTFS file system
SYNOPSISmkntfs [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] [-V] [-v]
[-z mft-zone-multiplier] [--debug] device [number-of-sectors]
DESCRIPTION
The mkntfs utility is used to create an NTFS file system on a device,
usually a disk partition, or file. The device operand is the special
file corresponding to the device; for example, /dev/dsk/c0d0p0. The
number-of-sectors operand is the number of blocks on the device. If
omitted, mkntfs automatically figures the file system size.
OPTIONS
Supported options are listed below. Most options have both single-let‐
ter and full-name forms. Multiple single-letter options that do not
take an argument can be combined. For example, -fv is the equivalent of
-f -v. A full-name option can be abbreviated to a unique prefix of its
name.
Options are divided among basic, advanced, output, and help options, as
listed below.
Basic Options
-C, --enable-compression
Enable compression on the volume.
-f, --fast or -q, --quick
Perform quick (fast) format. This option skips both zeroing of the
volume and bad sector checking.
-L, --label string
Set the volume label for the filesystem to string.
-n, --no-action
Causes mkntfs to not actually create a file system, but display
what it would do if it were to create a file system. All formatting
steps 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. This is due to limitations
in the NTFS compression algorithm used by Windows.
-F, --force
Force mkntfs to run, even if the specified device is not a block
special device, or appears to be mounted.
-H, --heads num
Specify the number of heads. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If
omitted, mkntfs attempts to determine the number of heads automati‐
cally. If that fails a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying
num is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created
volume.
-I, --no-indexing
Disable content indexing on the volume. This option is only mean‐
ingful on Windows 2000 and later. Windows NT 4.0 and earlier ignore
this, as they do not implement content indexing.
-p, --partition-start sector
Specify the partition start sector. The maximum is 4294967295
(2^32-1). If omitted, mkntfs attempts to determine sectorautomati‐
cally. If that fails, a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying
sector 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.
-s, --sector-size bytes
Specify the size of sectors in bytes. Valid sector size values are
256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096. If omitted, mkntfs attempts to
determine the sector-size automatically. If that fails, a default
of 512 bytes per sector is used.
-T, --zero-time
Fake the time to be 00:00:00 UTC, Jan 1, 1970, instead of the cur‐
rent system time. This can be useful for debugging purposes.
-z, --mft-zone-multiplier num
Set the master file table (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 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.
Although the MFT zone is resized on the fly as required during
operation of the NTFS driver, choosing an optimal value reduces
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%
Output Options
--debug
Includes the verbose output from the -v option, as well as addi‐
tional output useful for debugging mkntfs.
-q, --quiet
Verbose execution. Errors are written to stderr, no output to std‐
out occurs at all. Useful if mkntfs is run in a script.
-v, --verbose
Verbose execution.
Help Options
-h, --help
Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
-l, --license
Display the mkntfs licensing information and exit.
-V, --version
Display the mkntfs version number and exit.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │system/file-system/ntfsprogs │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Uncommitted │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOntfsprogs(1M), ntfsresize(1M), ntfsundelete(1M), attributes(5)
http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org
AUTHORSmkntfs was written by Anton Altaparmakov, Richard Russon, Erik Sornes
and Szabolcs Szakacsits.
SunOS 5.11 27 May 2009 mkntfs(1M)
