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⇱ Linux NTFS3 Driver Will Now Support Timestamps Prior To 1970 - Phoronix


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Linux NTFS3 Driver Will Now Support Timestamps Prior To 1970

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 5 December 2025 at 06:13 AM EST. 32 Comments
While NTFSPLUS continues to be developed as a new and modern NTFS open-source driver for Linux systems, at the moment NTFS3 from Paragon Software remains the most capable NTFS file-system driver within the mainline kernel. For the Linux 6.19 merge window a variety of fixes have landed for this driver.

While likely to not see too much use in practice, the NTFS3 driver with Linux 6.19 can now support timestamps prior to the year 1970. The first change noted for NTFS3 in the new kernel is pre-Epoch timestamps support for handling dates prior to the start of Unix time on 1 January 1970. NTFS3 had been relying on an unsigned 64-bit type but has now switched to a signed 64-bit type for coping with pre-epoch timestamps. The issue was raised by the xfstests program testing the file-system. But for anyone that may happen to have pre-1970 timestamps, Linux 6.19 fixes things up for NTFS3.

👁 NTFS3 pre-epoch timestamps commit


NTFS3 in Linux 6.19 also now disables readahead for compressed files, support for the NTFS3_IOC_SHUTDOWN ioctl, checking minimum alignment when performing direct I/O reads, and a variety of fixes. Nothing too particularly notable otherwise for the NTFS3 activity in Linux 6.19.

This pull request is now merged for providing the latest NTFS3 support in the mainline Linux kernel.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.