'\" te
.\" Portions Copyright (c) 2009, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved
.\" Copyright (c) 2002-2006 Szabolcs Szakacsits
.\" Copyright (c) 2002-2005 Anton Altaparmakov
.\" Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Richard Russon
.\" Copyright (c) 2007 Yura Pakhuchiy
.\" 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
.\" 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
.\" (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
.TH MKNTFS 1M "May 27, 2009"
.SH NAME
mkntfs \- create an NTFS file system
.SH SYNOPSIS
.LP
.nf
\fBmkntfs\fR [\fIoptions\fR] \fIdevice\fR [\fInumber_of_sectors\fR]
.fi

.LP
.nf
\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]
     [\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]
     [\fB-S\fR \fIsectors-per-track\fR] [\fB-s\fR \fIsector-size\fR] [\fB-T\fR] [\fB-V\fR] [\fB-v\fR]
     [\fB-z\fR \fImft-zone-multiplier\fR] [\fB--debug\fR] \fIdevice\fR [\fInumber-of-sectors\fR]
.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION
.sp
.LP
The \fBmkntfs\fR utility is used to create an NTFS file system on a device,
usually a disk partition, or file.  The \fIdevice\fR operand is the special
file corresponding to the device; for example, \fB/dev/dsk/c0d0p0\fR. The
\fInumber-of-sectors\fR operand is the number of blocks on the device. If
omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR automatically figures the file system size.
.SH OPTIONS
.sp
.LP
Supported options are listed below. Most options have both single-letter and
full-name forms. Multiple single-letter options that do not take an argument
can be combined. For example, \fB-fv\fR is the equivalent of \fB-f\fR \fB-v\fR.
A full-name option can be abbreviated to a unique prefix of its name.
.sp
.LP
Options are divided among basic, advanced, output, and help options, as listed
below.
.SS "Basic Options"
.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-C\fR, \fB--enable-compression\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Enable compression on the volume.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-f\fR, \fB--fast\fR or \fB-q\fR, \fB--quick\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Perform quick (fast) format. This option skips both  zeroing of the volume and
bad sector checking.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-L\fR, \fB--label\fR \fIstring\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Set the volume label for the filesystem to \fIstring\fR.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-n\fR, \fB--no-action\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Causes \fBmkntfs\fR 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.
.RE

.SS "Advanced Options"
.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-c\fR, \fB--cluster-size\fR \fIbytes\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
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,
\fBmkntfs\fR 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. This is due to limitations in the NTFS compression algorithm used by
Windows.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-F\fR, \fB--force\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Force \fBmkntfs\fR to run, even if the specified  device is not a block special
device, or appears to be mounted.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-H\fR, \fB--heads\fR \fInum\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Specify the number of heads. The maximum is 65535 (0xffff). If omitted,
\fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine the number of heads automatically. If that
fails a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying \fInum\fR is required for
Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-I\fR, \fB--no-indexing\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Disable content indexing on the volume. This option is only meaningful on
Windows 2000 and later. Windows NT 4.0 and earlier ignore this, as they do not
implement content indexing.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-p\fR, \fB--partition-start\fR \fIsector\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Specify the partition start sector. The maximum is 4294967295 (2^32-1). If
omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine \fIsector\fRautomatically. If that
fails, a default of 0 is used. Note that specifying \fIsector\fR is required
for Windows to be able to boot from the created volume.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-S\fR, \fB--sectors-per-track\fR \fInum\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
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.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-s\fR, \fB--sector-size\fR \fIbytes\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Specify the size of sectors in bytes. Valid sector size values are 256, 512,
1024, 2048, and 4096. If omitted, \fBmkntfs\fR attempts to determine the
sector-size automatically. If that fails, a default of 512 bytes per sector is
used.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-T\fR, \fB--zero-time\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Fake the time to be 00:00:00 UTC, Jan 1, 1970, instead of the current system
time. This can be useful for debugging purposes.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-z\fR, \fB--mft-zone-multiplier\fR \fInum\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
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 \fB1\fR,
\fB2\fR, \fB3\fR, and \fB4\fR. The values have the following meaning:
.sp
.in +2
.nf
MFT zone        MFT zone size
multiplier      (% of volume size)
1       12.5% (default)
2       25.0%
3       37.5%
4       50.0%
.fi
.in -2
.sp

.RE

.SS "Output Options"
.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB--debug\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Includes the verbose output from the \fB-v\fR option, as well as additional
output useful for debugging \fBmkntfs\fR.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-q\fR, \fB--quiet\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Verbose execution. Errors are written to stderr, no output to stdout occurs at
all. Useful if \fBmkntfs\fR is run in a script.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-v\fR, \fB--verbose\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Verbose execution.
.RE

.SS "Help Options"
.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-h\fR, \fB--help\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-l\fR, \fB--license\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Display the \fBmkntfs\fR licensing information and exit.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-V\fR, \fB--version\fR\fR
.ad
.sp .6
.RS 4n
Display the \fBmkntfs\fR version number and exit.
.RE

.SH ATTRIBUTES
.sp
.LP
See \fBattributes\fR(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
.sp

.sp
.TS
box;
c | c
l | l .
ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
_
Interface Stability	Uncommitted
.TE

.SH SEE ALSO
.sp
.LP
\fBntfsprogs\fR(1M), \fBntfsresize\fR(1M), \fBntfsundelete\fR(1M),
\fBattributes\fR(5)
.sp
.LP
http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org
.SH AUTHORS
.sp
.LP
\fBmkntfs\fR was written by Anton Altaparmakov, Richard Russon, Erik Sornes and
Szabolcs Szakacsits.