How can I format a partition into a filesystem quickly?

filesystems mkfs

24,039

If you would like to format a partition as NTFS, please use mkfs.ntfs or mkntfs. From man mkfs:

This  mkfs  frontend  is  deprecated  in  favour of filesystem specific
mkfs.<type> utils.

For NTFS, you can add the -f or -Q flag to perform a quick format. From man mkntfs:

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

Therefore, your command should be:

$ sudo mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sdb1

24,039

Tim

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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Tim almost 2 years
In gparted, repartitioning a disk into one single partition and formatting the partition to a filesystem is very fast. It seems not write zeros to the partition.

How can I achieve the same when using commands? Here is what I got:
```
$ sudo mkfs -t ntfs /dev/sdb1
Cluster size has been automatically set to 4096 bytes.
Initializing device with zeroes:  14% 16%
```
Tim over 5 years

Thanks. Why "This mkfs frontend is deprecated in favour of filesystem specific mkfs.<type> utils."?
mxmehl over 5 years

@Tim glad it worked. Would you please mark my answer as accepted if it lead you to a solution? I can only speculate why it has been deprecated. Probably because it's a good approach to have specialised tools for such complicated operations.