CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellfilesystemsntfs
bot47
bot47

Reputation: 1514

Resetting NTFS dirty bit

I'd like to know whether it's possible to clear the NTFS dirty bit in bash script.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 12828

Answers (3)

palswim
palswim

Reputation: 12140

Though this question belongs on Unix.SE, you can clear the NTFS dirty bit with the ntfsfix tool, which comes with the ntfs-3g package in most Linux distributions. The -d flag explicitly clears the dirty bit.

ntfsfix -d /dev/sda1

Upvotes: 6

jrtipton
jrtipton

Reputation: 2459

The dirty bit is there because NTFS witnessed some corruption, not because it needs to replay its log (though the intuition here makes sense).

Are you trying to avoid a chkdsk run at startup? We call that 'autochk', and you can disable that via chkntfs. (Apparently we just love the term 'chk'.) Then you'll only get a chkdsk run when you ask for one.

Upvotes: 0

Steven Schlansker
Steven Schlansker

Reputation: 38536

Doing so is inherently unsafe. ntfsprogs has plans for a ntfsck, which would allow you to safely fix up and mark as clean a filesystem. However, the tool has not been implemented yet.

That said, simply clearing the dirty bit is a recipe for trouble. If a filesystem crashed you must run recovery before using it, which for now requires Windows as far as I know.

Why do you want to do that? Maybe there's a better way to do whatever you're trying to accomplish?

Upvotes: 1

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