K.1. Creating NTFS file systems

NTFS file systems can be created with mkfs on any EVMS or compatibility volume that is at least 1 MB in size and that does not already have a file system. The following options are available for creating NTFS file systems:

label

Specify a volume label for the file system. The default is none.

cluster-size

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 cluster-size is determined by the volume size. The value is determined as follows:


Volume size	Default cluster

0-512 MB	512 bytes
512 MB-1 GB	1024 bytes
1 GB-2 GB	2048 bytes
2 GB+		4096 bytes
mft-zone-mult

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). Note that small files are stored entirely within the node. 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 12.5 (the default), 25, 37.5, and 50.

compress

Enable compression on the volume.

quick

Perform quick format. This skips both zeroing of the volume and bad sector checking.