ntfsprogs/mkntfs.8.in

.\" Copyright (c) 2001\-2006 Anton Altaparmakov.
.\" Copyright (c) 2005 Richard Russon.
.\" Copyright (c) 2005\-2006 Szabolcs Szakacsits.
.\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
.\"
.TH MKNTFS 8 "January 2006" "ntfs-3g @VERSION@"
.SH NAME
mkntfs \- create an NTFS file system
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B mkntfs
[\fIoptions\fR] \fIdevice \fR[\fInumber\-of\-sectors\fR]
.PP
.B mkntfs
[
.B \-C
]
[
.B \-c
.I cluster\-size
]
[
.B \-F
]
[
.B \-f
]
[
.B \-H
.I heads
]
[
.B \-h
]
[
.B \-I
]
[
.B \-L
.I volume\-label
]
[
.B \-l
]
[
.B \-n
]
[
.B \-p
.I part\-start\-sect
]
[
.B \-Q
]
[
.B \-q
]
[
.B \-S
.I sectors\-per\-track
]
[
.B \-s
.I sector\-size
]
[
.B \-T
]
[
.B \-U
]
[
.B \-V
]
[
.B \-v
]
[
.B \-z
.I mft\-zone\-multiplier
]
[
.B \-\-debug
]
.I device
[
.I number\-of\-sectors
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B mkntfs
is used to create an NTFS file system on a device (usually a disk partition)
or file.
.I device
is the special file corresponding to the device (e.g
.IR /dev/hdXX ).
.I number\-of\-sectors
is the number of sectors on the device. If omitted,
.B mkntfs
automagically figures the file system size.
.SH OPTIONS
Below is a summary of all the options that
.B mkntfs
accepts.  Nearly all options have two equivalent names.  The short name is
preceded by
.B \-
and the long name is preceded by
.BR \-\- .
Any single letter options, that don't take an argument, can be combined into a
single command, e.g.
.B \-fv
is equivalent to
.BR "\-f \-v" .
Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.
.SS Basic options
.TP
\fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-fast\fR, \fB\-Q\fR, \fB\-\-quick\fR
Perform quick (fast) format. This will skip both zeroing of the volume and bad
sector checking.
.TP
\fB\-L\fR, \fB\-\-label\fR STRING
Set the volume label for the filesystem.
.TP
\fB\-C\fR, \fB\-\-enable\-compression\fR
Enable compression on the volume.
.TP
\fB\-n\fR, \fB\-\-no\-action\fR
Causes
.B 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.
.SS Advanced options
.TP
\fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-cluster\-size\fR 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,
.B mkntfs
uses 4096 bytes as the default cluster size.
.sp
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).
.TP
\fB\-s\fR, \fB\-\-sector\-size\fR BYTES
Specify the size of sectors in bytes. Valid sector size values are 256, 512,
1024, 2048 and 4096 bytes per sector. If omitted,
.B mkntfs
attempts to determine the
.I sector\-size
automatically and if that fails a default of 512 bytes per sector is used.
.TP
\fB\-p\fR, \fB\-\-partition\-start\fR SECTOR
Specify the partition start sector. The maximum is 4294967295 (2^32\-1). If
omitted,
.B mkntfs
attempts to determine
.I 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
.I part\-start\-sect
is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
.TP
\fB\-H\fR, \fB\-\-heads\fR NUM
Specify the number of heads. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If omitted,
.B mkntfs
attempts to determine the number of
.I heads
automatically and if that fails a default of 0 is used. Note that
.I heads
is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
.TP
\fB\-S\fR, \fB\-\-sectors\-per\-track\fR NUM
Specify the number of sectors per track. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If
omitted,
.B mkntfs
attempts to determine the number of
.I sectors\-per\-track
automatically and if that fails a default of 0 is used. Note that
.I sectors\-per\-track
is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
.TP
\fB\-z\fR, \fB\-\-mft\-zone\-multiplier\fR 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:
.TS
box;
lB lB
lB lB
c l.
MFT zone	MFT zone size
multiplier	(% of volume size)
1	12.5% (default)
2	25.0%
3	37.5%
4	50.0%
.TE
.sp
.TP
\fB\-T\fR, \fB\-\-zero\-time\fR
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.
.TP
\fB\-U\fR, \fB\-\-with\-uuid\fR
Generate a random volume UUID.
.TP
\fB\-I\fR, \fB\-\-no\-indexing\fR
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.)
.TP
\fB\-F\fR, \fB\-\-force\fR
Force
.B mkntfs
to run, even if the specified
.I device
is not a block special device, or appears to be mounted.
.SS Output options
.TP
\fB\-q\fR, \fB\-\-quiet\fR
Quiet execution; only errors are written to stderr, no output to stdout
occurs at all. Useful if
.B mkntfs
is run in a script.
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
Verbose execution.
.TP
\fB\-\-debug\fR
Really verbose execution; includes the verbose output from the
.B \-v
option as well as additional output useful for debugging
.B mkntfs.
.SS Help options
.TP
\fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR
Print the version number of
.B mkntfs
and exit.
.TP
\fB\-l\fR, \fB\-\-license\fR
Print the licensing information of
.B mkntfs
and exit.
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
.SH 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.
.P
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.
.SH BUGS
If you find a bug please send an email describing the problem to the
development team:
.br
.nh
ntfs\-3g\-devel@lists.sf.net
.hy
.SH AUTHORS
.B 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.
.SH AVAILABILITY
.B mkntfs
is part of the
.B ntfs-3g
package and is available from:
.br
.nh
http://www.tuxera.com/community/
.hy
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR badblocks (8),
.BR ntfsprogs (8)