What causes high CPU usage by mount.ntfs?

Question

I'm in Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit. mount.ntfs use high CPU--40%. I have Intel Core i5-3210M. Why is this happening?

lsblk:

NAME   FSTYPE   SIZE MOUNTPOINT        LABEL
sda           465.8G                   
├─sda1 ntfs     300M                   Windows RE tools
├─sda2 vfat     100M /boot/efi         SYSTEM
├─sda3 ntfs     438M                   Windows
├─sda4 ntfs    97.7G                   
├─sda5 ext4    94.1G /                 
├─sda6 ntfs   263.3G /media/user/DATA1 DATA
├─sda7          128M                   
└─sda8 ntfs     9.5G                   Recovery
sr0            1024M

top:

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND     
26199 root      20   0   14712   1940    684 R  45.5  0.0   3:07.80 mount.ntfs  
26268 user      20   0 1255660 385524  49108 S  15.3  4.8   1:01.41 firefox     
28549 root      20   0  483936 130680 109148 S  12.3  1.6  11:06.58 Xorg        
26250 user      20   0  538956  30212  19316 S   6.0  0.4   0:22.58 gnome-syst+ 
29140 user      20   0 1579488 237416  38440 S   5.3  2.9   5:56.58 compiz      
 8311 user      20   0 4833744 253740  25596 S   4.3  3.1   1:26.34 java        
31864 user      20   0  671040  22512  13420 S   1.3  0.3   0:07.73 gnome-term+ 
   10 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.3  0.0   0:13.72 rcuos/2

Enter 'sudo lsof <path_to_NTFS_mount>' in terminal to find out which app uses ntfs.mount — Farimah, Nov 23 '15 at 09:27

Quetza · Answer 1 · 2019-11-14T16:01:14.873

18

Changing the mount options for the NTFS partition changed the application I was using from unusable with 100% mount.ntfs CPU to fully functional. The key one to use is "big_writes", but my full list is:

windows_names,norecover,big_writes,streams_interface=windows,inherit

You'd use it like this:

mount -t ntfs -o windows_names,norecover,big_writes,streams_interface=windows,inherit /dev/disk/by-uuid/DISKUUID /mountpoint

The full list of options and what they mean on the Ubuntu manpage for ntfs-3g: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/eoan/man8/ntfs-3g.8.html

edited Nov 14 '19 at 16:01

answered Nov 10 '19 at 10:36

Quetza

281

How to check if big_writes is on? I tried with mount and cat /etc/mtab but that doesn't seem to give the full option list – golimar Jan 09 '23 at 12:23
I just used big_writes and it solved 99% of my problems – kommradHomer Aug 02 '23 at 17:25

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '21 at 11:27

3

I'm using a raspberry pi 4b 2gb. Do you have file compression enabled on the ntfs partition? Last time I accidentally leave it enabled and it killed 3 times the performance in linux. It took me 2 full days to figure it out. not sure if it works for you.

answered Apr 21 '21 at 11:27

Little Karl

31

An additional remark regarding compression: if the NTFS volume has large compressed files, then opening them for writing uses a lot of CPU, even if nothing is ever written. This is particularly problematic for database files like SQLite. – rustyx Jun 05 '22 at 21:16

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 17:43

In my case, I have Steam and my games installed on an NTFS partition. For some reason, Steam caused a lot of CPU usage on mount.ntfs (and also partly on its own). It was also unresponsive.

After killing Steam, CPU usage of mount.ntfs dropped.

Note that I already have my NTFS partition configured as indicated in the other answers:

defaults,noatime,big_writes,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=46

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 28 '17 at 16:01

1

You must add line to /etc/fstab for automounting the ntfs partition

/dev/sda6   /media/user/DATA1   ntfs    defaults,nls=utf-8,umask=007,gid=46   0   0

See more details about automount ntfs in:
How to automount NTFS partitions?

edited Nov 28 '17 at 16:01

Videonauth

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answered Nov 28 '17 at 12:02

Oleksandr

167

reinstalling the OS - it's better answer ? Now I fix it CPU load problem on own laptop - just add line to /etc/fstab for automount ntfs partition – Oleksandr Nov 28 '17 at 15:13
that's better ? – Oleksandr Nov 28 '17 at 15:25
Yes better now. – Videonauth Nov 28 '17 at 16:02
@Oleksandr it was in 2014 lol I remember that I googled without solution reinstalling the OS was my only solution – aliarousyoucef Dec 03 '17 at 09:53
25

And how in the hell exactly is automounting going to reduce the CPU utilization of mount.nfs? Explain please. I don't see how this is the top answer. – Steven Linn Jan 30 '18 at 18:55
I think it's just bug in mount.ntfs – Oleksandr Jul 17 '18 at 08:23

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 07 '22 at 07:58

I had a similar problem and in my case the issue was that i had deleted lots of files from the NTFS partition but did not empty the trash. After emptying the trash all went back to normal. Note that the trash bin showed itself as empty until i mounted the partition and waited some time.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 02 '16 at 18:47

0

the only solution for me was reinstalling the OS .

answered Sep 02 '16 at 18:47

aliarousyoucef

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What causes high CPU usage by mount.ntfs?

6 Answers6