Formatting an SSD with Btrfs on Ubuntu Desktop

In this article, I will explain the steps and important considerations when formatting an NVMe SSD—previously used on Windows and formatted with NTFS—into Btrfs on an Ubuntu Desktop environment.

While Btrfs makes it difficult to read the disk from Windows, if you intend to use it exclusively on Linux, you can expect improved stability and potentially better performance compared to NTFS.

Although ext4 is also a viable option, Btrfs offers advantages such as snapshotting and transparent compression.

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
• Target device (partition): /dev/nvme0n1p1 (converted from NTFS to Btrfs)

1. Checking Disk Status

First, check the current mount status and filesystem.

df -hv
lsblk -f

• df -hv Displays usage statistics for mounted filesystems.

• lsblk -f Shows device structure and filesystem types (e.g., ext4, ntfs, btrfs).

> df -hv
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs           3.2G  2.5M  3.2G   1% /run
/dev/sda2       915G  856G   13G  99% /
（omitted）
/dev/nvme0n1p1  932G  172G  760G  19% /media/username/nvme0

> lsblk -f
（omitted）
nvme0n1
└─nvme0n1p1 ntfs  volume 8008198808197DFA  759.6G  18% /media/username/nvme0

From this output, you can confirm that /dev/nvme0n1p1 is currently formatted with NTFS.

2. Unmounting

Before formatting with Btrfs, unmount the target device.

sudo umount /media/username/nvme0

• umount Unmounts the filesystem.
• Formatting cannot be performed on a mounted device, and doing so will result in an error such as: ERROR: /dev/nvme0n1p1 is mounted
• In my case, the umount command produced no output but completed successfully.

3. Formatting with Btrfs

sudo mkfs.btrfs -L nvme0 -f /dev/nvme0n1p1

If the command is not found, install it with:

sudo apt install btrfs-progs

All data will be erased during formatting.

• mkfs.btrfs Creates a Btrfs filesystem.
• -L nvme0 Assigns a label (name) to the filesystem.
• -f Forces overwriting of the existing filesystem (NTFS in this case).

Although this was a 1TB SSD, the process completed in about one second in my case.

4. Verifying the Filesystem

blkid /dev/nvme0n1p1

This command allows you to verify the UUID (used later for mount configuration) and confirm that the filesystem is now Btrfs.

From my experience, immediately after formatting, the TYPE was still shown as ntfs. In my case, rebooting resolved this and the correct filesystem type was recognized. (There may be other ways to refresh it… But I rebooted.)

5. Automatic Mount Configuration (fstab)

At this point, formatting with Btrfs is complete. The following steps are optional, as you can manually mount the device each time.

However, for an internal SSD, it is more convenient to have it mounted automatically at boot.

To enable automatic mounting, edit the fstab file:

sudo vim /etc/fstab

Example entry:

UUID=ec59293e-face-4757-b787-7e85e1a559a0 /media/username/nvme0 btrfs compress=zstd:3,noatime,autodefrag,nofail,x-systemd.automount 0 0

• UUID Obtained from the blkid command.

• /media/username/nvme0 Mount point directory. Create it in advance.

• compress=zstd:3 Enables transparent compression. While options like lzo exist, zstd offers a good balance of speed and compression ratio. The number indicates compression level; 3 is the default and generally well-balanced. I hardly notice any lag

• noatime Disables access time updates, which may slightly improve performance.

• autodefrag Enables automatic defragmentation.

• nofail Allows the system to boot even if mounting fails.

• x-systemd.automount In my X11 desktop environment, this setting caused the disk icon to appear on the desktop at boot. In my experience, it is not required for automatic mounting itself and behavior may differ under Wayland.

6. Setting Mount Point Permissions

By default, the mount point is owned by root, which can be inconvenient. Change ownership to allow a regular user to write:

sudo chown -Rv $USER:$USER /media/username/nvme0

7. Checking Compression Status

One of the advantages of Btrfs is file compression. To verify it, place some files in the mounted directory and run:

sudo compsize /media/username/nvme0/

If the command is not available, install it:

sudo apt install btrfs-compsize

• compsize Displays compression statistics for Btrfs.

• When zstd compression is enabled, the output looks like:

Type       Perc     Disk Usage   Uncompressed
zstd        19%      4.0G          20G

This indicates approximately an 80% compression ratio.

Compression efficiency is higher for text-heavy data and lower for already compressed data such as images.