mkntfs

Perform quick (fast) format. This will skip both zeroing of the volume and bad sector checking.

Set the volume label for the filesystem.

Enable compression on the volume.

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 determines the cluster-size from the volume size. The value is determined as follows: box; lB lB lB l l r. Volume size Default cluster size 0 - 512MB 512 bytes 512MB - 1GB 1024 bytes 1GB - 2GB 2048 bytes 2GB + 4096 bytes 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).

Select the version of NTFS you wish to create. This can be "1.2" (Windows NT 4.0) or "3.1" (Windows XP, Server 2003 and Vista). Versions are upwards compatible and Windows 2000, which uses version "3.0", can read/write both. If this option is omitted then version "3.1" is used.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: 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%

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.

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.)

Force mkntfs to run, even if the specified device is not a block special device, or appears to be mounted.

Output options

Quiet execution; only errors are written to stderr, no output to stdout occurs at all. Useful if mkntfs is run in a script.

Verbose execution.

Really verbose execution; includes the verbose output from the -v option as well as additional output useful for debugging mkntfs.

Help options

Print the version number of mkntfs and exit.

Print the licensing information of mkntfs and exit.

Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.