1 '\" te
   2 .\" Portions Copyright (c) 2009, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved
   3 .\" Copyright (c) 2002-2006 Szabolcs Szakacsits
   4 .\" Copyright (c) 2002-2005 Anton Altaparmakov
   5 .\" Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Richard Russon
   6 .\" Copyright (c) 2007 Yura Pakhuchiy
   7 .\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation ; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.  This program is distributed
   8 .\" in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program
   9 .\" (in the main directory of the Linux-NTFS distribution in the file COPYING);  if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 11-1307 USA
  10 .TH MKNTFS 1M "May 27, 2009"
  11 .SH NAME
  12 mkntfs \- create an NTFS file system
  13 .SH SYNOPSIS
  14 .LP
  15 .nf
  16 \fBmkntfs\fR [\fIoptions\fR] \fIdevice\fR [\fInumber_of_sectors\fR]
  17 .fi
  18 
  19 .LP
  20 .nf
  21 \fBmkntfs\fR [\fB-C\fR] [\fB-c\fR \fIcluster-size\fR] [\fB-F\fR] [\fB-f\fR] [\fB-H\fR \fIheads\fR] [\fB-h\fR] [\fB-I\fR]
  22      [\fB-L\fR \fIvolume-label\fR] [\fB-l\fR] [\fB-n\fR] [\fB-p\fR \fIpart-start-sect\fR] [\fB-Q\fR] [\fB-q\fR]
  23      [\fB-S\fR \fIsectors-per-track\fR] [\fB-s\fR \fIsector-size\fR] [\fB-T\fR] [\fB-V\fR] [\fB-v\fR]
  24      [\fB-z\fR \fImft-zone-multiplier\fR] [\fB--debug\fR] \fIdevice\fR [\fInumber-of-sectors\fR]
  25 .fi
  26 
  27 .SH DESCRIPTION
  28 .sp
  29 .LP
  30 The \fBmkntfs\fR utility is used to create an NTFS file system on a device,
  31 usually a disk partition, or file.  The \fIdevice\fR operand is the special
  32 file corresponding to the device; for example, \fB/dev/dsk/c0d0p0\fR. The
  33 \fInumber-of-sectors\fR operand is the number of blocks on the device. If
  34 omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR automatically figures the file system size.
  35 .SH OPTIONS
  36 .sp
  37 .LP
  38 Supported options are listed below. Most options have both single-letter and
  39 full-name forms. Multiple single-letter options that do not take an argument
  40 can be combined. For example, \fB-fv\fR is the equivalent of \fB-f\fR \fB-v\fR.
  41 A full-name option can be abbreviated to a unique prefix of its name.
  42 .sp
  43 .LP
  44 Options are divided among basic, advanced, output, and help options, as listed
  45 below.
  46 .SS "Basic Options"
  47 .sp
  48 .ne 2
  49 .na
  50 \fB\fB-C\fR, \fB--enable-compression\fR\fR
  51 .ad
  52 .sp .6
  53 .RS 4n
  54 Enable compression on the volume.
  55 .RE
  56 
  57 .sp
  58 .ne 2
  59 .na
  60 \fB\fB-f\fR, \fB--fast\fR or \fB-q\fR, \fB--quick\fR\fR
  61 .ad
  62 .sp .6
  63 .RS 4n
  64 Perform quick (fast) format. This option skips both  zeroing of the volume and
  65 bad sector checking.
  66 .RE
  67 
  68 .sp
  69 .ne 2
  70 .na
  71 \fB\fB-L\fR, \fB--label\fR \fIstring\fR\fR
  72 .ad
  73 .sp .6
  74 .RS 4n
  75 Set the volume label for the filesystem to \fIstring\fR.
  76 .RE
  77 
  78 .sp
  79 .ne 2
  80 .na
  81 \fB\fB-n\fR, \fB--no-action\fR\fR
  82 .ad
  83 .sp .6
  84 .RS 4n
  85 Causes \fBmkntfs\fR to not actually create a file system, but display what it
  86 would do if it were to create a file system. All formatting steps are carried
  87 out except the actual writing to the device.
  88 .RE
  89 
  90 .SS "Advanced Options"
  91 .sp
  92 .ne 2
  93 .na
  94 \fB\fB-c\fR, \fB--cluster-size\fR \fIbytes\fR\fR
  95 .ad
  96 .sp .6
  97 .RS 4n
  98 Specify the size of clusters in bytes. Valid cluster size values are powers of
  99 two, with at least 256, and at most 65536, bytes per cluster. If omitted,
 100 \fBmkntfs\fR uses 4096 bytes as the default cluster size.
 101 .sp
 102 Note that the default cluster size is set to be at least equal to the sector
 103 size, as a cluster cannot be smaller than a sector. Also, note that values
 104 greater than 4096 have the side effect that compression is disabled on the
 105 volume. This is due to limitations in the NTFS compression algorithm used by
 106 Windows.
 107 .RE
 108 
 109 .sp
 110 .ne 2
 111 .na
 112 \fB\fB-F\fR, \fB--force\fR\fR
 113 .ad
 114 .sp .6
 115 .RS 4n
 116 Force \fBmkntfs\fR to run, even if the specified  device is not a block special
 117 device, or appears to be mounted.
 118 .RE
 119 
 120 .sp
 121 .ne 2
 122 .na
 123 \fB\fB-H\fR, \fB--heads\fR \fInum\fR\fR
 124 .ad
 125 .sp .6
 126 .RS 4n
 127 Specify the number of heads. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If omitted,
 128 \fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine the number of heads automatically. If that
 129 fails a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying \fInum\fR is required for
 130 Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
 131 .RE
 132 
 133 .sp
 134 .ne 2
 135 .na
 136 \fB\fB-I\fR, \fB--no-indexing\fR\fR
 137 .ad
 138 .sp .6
 139 .RS 4n
 140 Disable content indexing on the volume. This option is only meaningful on
 141 Windows 2000 and later. Windows NT 4.0 and earlier ignore this, as they do not
 142 implement content indexing.
 143 .RE
 144 
 145 .sp
 146 .ne 2
 147 .na
 148 \fB\fB-p\fR, \fB--partition-start\fR \fIsector\fR\fR
 149 .ad
 150 .sp .6
 151 .RS 4n
 152 Specify the partition start sector. The maximum is 4294967295 (2^32-1). If
 153 omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine \fIsector\fRautomatically. If that
 154 fails, a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying \fIsector\fR is required
 155 for Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
 156 .RE
 157 
 158 .sp
 159 .ne 2
 160 .na
 161 \fB\fB-S\fR, \fB--sectors-per-track\fR \fInum\fR\fR
 162 .ad
 163 .sp .6
 164 .RS 4n
 165 Specify the number of sectors per track. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If
 166 omitted, mkntfs attempts to  determine the number of sectors-per-track
 167 automatically and if that fails a default of 0 is used. Note that
 168 sectors-per-track is required for Windows to be able to boot from the created
 169 volume.
 170 .RE
 171 
 172 .sp
 173 .ne 2
 174 .na
 175 \fB\fB-s\fR, \fB--sector-size\fR \fIbytes\fR\fR
 176 .ad
 177 .sp .6
 178 .RS 4n
 179 Specify the size of sectors in bytes. Valid sector size values are 256, 512,
 180 1024, 2048, and 4096. If omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine the
 181 sector-size automatically. If that fails, a default of 512 bytes per sector is
 182 used.
 183 .RE
 184 
 185 .sp
 186 .ne 2
 187 .na
 188 \fB\fB-T\fR, \fB--zero-time\fR\fR
 189 .ad
 190 .sp .6
 191 .RS 4n
 192 Fake the time to be 00:00:00 UTC, Jan 1, 1970, instead of the current system
 193 time. This can be useful for debugging purposes.
 194 .RE
 195 
 196 .sp
 197 .ne 2
 198 .na
 199 \fB\fB-z\fR, \fB--mft-zone-multiplier\fR \fInum\fR\fR
 200 .ad
 201 .sp .6
 202 .RS 4n
 203 Set the master file table (MFT) zone multiplier, which determines the size of
 204 the MFT zone to use on the volume. The MFT zone is the area at the beginning of
 205 the volume reserved for the MFT, which stores the on-disk inodes (MFT records).
 206 It is noteworthy that small files are stored entirely within the inode; thus,
 207 if you expect to use the volume for storing large numbers of very small files,
 208 it is useful to set the zone multiplier to a higher value. Although the MFT
 209 zone is resized on the fly as required during operation of the NTFS driver,
 210 choosing an optimal value reduces fragmentation. Valid values are \fB1\fR,
 211 \fB2\fR, \fB3\fR, and \fB4\fR. The values have the following meaning:
 212 .sp
 213 .in +2
 214 .nf
 215 MFT zone        MFT zone size
 216 multiplier      (% of volume size)
 217 1       12.5% (default)
 218 2       25.0%
 219 3       37.5%
 220 4       50.0%
 221 .fi
 222 .in -2
 223 .sp
 224 
 225 .RE
 226 
 227 .SS "Output Options"
 228 .sp
 229 .ne 2
 230 .na
 231 \fB\fB--debug\fR\fR
 232 .ad
 233 .sp .6
 234 .RS 4n
 235 Includes the verbose output from the \fB-v\fR option, as well as additional
 236 output useful for debugging \fBmkntfs\fR.
 237 .RE
 238 
 239 .sp
 240 .ne 2
 241 .na
 242 \fB\fB-q\fR, \fB--quiet\fR\fR
 243 .ad
 244 .sp .6
 245 .RS 4n
 246 Verbose execution. Errors are written to stderr, no output to stdout occurs at
 247 all. Useful if \fBmkntfs\fR is run in a script.
 248 .RE
 249 
 250 .sp
 251 .ne 2
 252 .na
 253 \fB\fB-v\fR, \fB--verbose\fR\fR
 254 .ad
 255 .sp .6
 256 .RS 4n
 257 Verbose execution.
 258 .RE
 259 
 260 .SS "Help Options"
 261 .sp
 262 .ne 2
 263 .na
 264 \fB\fB-h\fR, \fB--help\fR\fR
 265 .ad
 266 .sp .6
 267 .RS 4n
 268 Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
 269 .RE
 270 
 271 .sp
 272 .ne 2
 273 .na
 274 \fB\fB-l\fR, \fB--license\fR\fR
 275 .ad
 276 .sp .6
 277 .RS 4n
 278 Display the \fBmkntfs\fR licensing information and exit.
 279 .RE
 280 
 281 .sp
 282 .ne 2
 283 .na
 284 \fB\fB-V\fR, \fB--version\fR\fR
 285 .ad
 286 .sp .6
 287 .RS 4n
 288 Display the \fBmkntfs\fR version number and exit.
 289 .RE
 290 
 291 .SH ATTRIBUTES
 292 .sp
 293 .LP
 294 See \fBattributes\fR(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
 295 .sp
 296 
 297 .sp
 298 .TS
 299 box;
 300 c | c
 301 l | l .
 302 ATTRIBUTE TYPE  ATTRIBUTE VALUE
 303 _
 304 Interface Stability     Uncommitted
 305 .TE
 306 
 307 .SH SEE ALSO
 308 .sp
 309 .LP
 310 \fBntfsprogs\fR(1M), \fBntfsresize\fR(1M), \fBntfsundelete\fR(1M),
 311 \fBattributes\fR(5)
 312 .sp
 313 .LP
 314 http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org
 315 .SH AUTHORS
 316 .sp
 317 .LP
 318 \fBmkntfs\fR was written by Anton Altaparmakov, Richard Russon, Erik Sornes and
 319 Szabolcs Szakacsits.