NTFSCMP(8)

📦
version 2026.9.28 · 6 versions
, in arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

💅 ntfscmp — the compare-two-NTFS-filesystems girlie pop ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to ntfscmp(8) from the system manager's manual section 8 🎀 — this is the little icon that diffs two whole NTFS filesystems for you and tells you every single thing that's different. no cap. 👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ntfscmp [OPTIONS] DEVICE1 DEVICE2

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

The ntfscmp program makes a comparison between two NTFS filesystems — like, from all aspects — and reports all the variances it finds. literally all of them. 💀

The filesystems can live on block devices or on image files, either one, she doesn't care. ntfscmp can be used for volume verification, but honestly? its primary purpose was to be an efficient development tool, used to quickly locate, identify and check the correctness of the metadata changes made to NTFS. main character energy fr. 🛠️✨

So if you're only interested in the NTFS metadata changes — and not, like, the whole vibe — then it could be useful to compare the metadata images created by using the --metadata option of ntfsclone(8) to eliminate the usually uninteresting timestamp changes. 🙈 those timestamps are always causing drama for no reason.

The terse output of ntfscmp is intentional, bestie, because the provided information is enough in each case to determine the exact differences. iykyk. 🫶 You can achieve this, for instance, if you compare the verbose outputs of ntfsinfo(8) for each reported inodes by the diff(1) utility. slay. 🦋

✨ OPTIONS ✨

Below is a summary of the options that ntfscmp accepts. not too many, she's lowkey chill:

  • -P, --no-progress-bar — don't show progress bars. no little loading bar, no suspense. 💅
  • -v, --verbose — more informational output. give me the lore. 🔥
  • -h, --help — display help and exit. always there for you. 🎀

💀 EXIT CODES 💀

The exit code is 0 on success, non-zero otherwise. so if it's 0 you ate, and if it's not, something's giving chaos. 😭

🙈 KNOWN ISSUES 🙈

No problem is known. literally none, she's flawless. 💅 But if you would find otherwise, then please send your report to the development team: ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net — they wanna know, fr fr. 💌

👑 AUTHOR 👑

ntfscmp was written by Szabolcs Szakacsits. It was ported to ntfs-3g by Erik Larsson. legends, both of them. 🫶🌟

🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

ntfscmp is part of the ntfs-3g package and is available from: https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g/wiki/

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ntfsinfo(8), ntfscat(8), diff(1), ntfsclone(8), ntfsprogs(8)

and that's the whole page bestie!! 💖 this one came from the ntfs-3g package, version 2026.9.28, and the date on it is April 2006 — yes, she's an icon from 2006 and she's still serving. periodt. 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from