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Microsoft Announces ReFS, a New Filesystem For Windows 8

bonch writes "Microsoft has shared details about its new filesystem called ReFS, which stands for Resilient File System. Codenamed 'Protogon,' ReFS will first appear as the storage system for Windows Server and later be offered to Windows clients. Microsoft plans to deprecate lesser-used NTFS features while maintaining 'a high degree of compatibility' for most uses. NTFS has been criticized in the past for its inelegant architecture."

13 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My preview of ReFS by Anon-Admin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So they are starting to catch up with the ext3 filesystem.

  2. Great! by Sez+Zero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All we need is another MS-specific filesystem to cause compatibility headaches.

    1. Re:Great! by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'll agree.

      As ugly as NTFS is, the one thing I've liked about it is that it's the only FS used by Windows and Windows Servers for a dozen years.

      With Linux, on the other hand, I've had to deal with ext2, ResierFS, ext3, ext4, and those are only the popular ones! There are a ton of other specialized filesystems for other features, such as encryption or use on flash memory!

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  3. Re:linux driver by NJRoadfan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That might be motivation for creating ReFS. Third party NTFS drivers finally became mature enough to safely read/write the file system... so lets create a new undocumented filesystem and make data exchange between other OSes a PITA again. It also means WinFS is completely dead and never coming back.

  4. Re:My preview of ReFS by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not everything that Microsoft makes is bad. Just because someone says a particular product or technology is good doesn't make them a troll. In fact, as much as Windows drives me up a wall, I am a really big fan of Microsoft Security Essentials.

    Assuming that everything Microsoft is terrible conversely is trolling.

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  5. Re:My preview of ReFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or maybe, just maybe, his post is actually a joke, wherein he copy/pasted the list of features being dropped (see paragraph 5 in TFA), claiming they were the advancements.

    But no, conspiracy theories are much more fun.

  6. Microsoft plans to deprecate lesser-used features by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Microsoft plans to deprecate lesser-used features" --- such as the reasonable level of compatibility that has started to show up in non-Microsoft implementations of NTFS over the last couple of years. We may be assured that ReFS is a patent minefield.

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  7. Re:My preview of ReFS by andydread · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually for Windows MSE works pretty decent compared to the others with seeming less resource usage. Didn't they purchase that technology from someone else? I can't remember. However TechGuys is a known paid shill. At this point I don't even know why he bothers. The problem with this new filesystem is that it features very poor interoperability with non Microsoft products leaving your data at the mercy of Microsoft even worse than before. Now-a-days you can boot up Windows computer with a Linux live CD and rescue your files when windows is borked. That won't happen now. Microsort is doing everything in their power to break interoperability with open source and competing operating systems.

  8. Compatibility Grief is What I See Coming by BoRegardless · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All the file utilities for both Mac and PC and how you handle these different systems including forward/backward compatibility, Parallels, VMWare, Backup software, hard drives and tape devices will all go through teeth nashing debugs as we try to get everything to work with a new file system.

    That may be OK when you are an IT professional.

    For someone who "just wants it to work" there is likely to be lots of surprises ahead.

  9. Then I guess we live in a sad world by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When it comes down to it, NTFS is a pretty good file system. If you look in to things you find that the feature list for BTRFS reads an awful like a feature set of current NTFS.

    None of that is to say that NTFS couldn't stand improvement, and indeed it is being improved, but I've yet to see the amazing widely used file system that is so much better than it. Ext3 is functional, but leaves much to be desired.

  10. Re:My preview of ReFS by bonch · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Not everything that Microsoft makes is bad. Just because someone says a particular product or technology is good doesn't make them a troll.

    If you've been following the discussions on the site lately, you'll notice that if you praise a competitor to Google or Linux, you are accused of being a "shill" by a swarm of attackers, the new buzzword used to filter out opposing viewpoints. Based on moderation trends, it's working. And of course, the irony that these "shill" accusers only go after opponents of Google is lost on them.

    Kind of sad, because despite occasional advocacy, Slashdot discussion really did used to be more open-minded and reflective of the tech industry as a whole.

  11. Re:NTFS is resilient! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Respect?? That's absolutely terrible.

    A modern journalling filesystem should not experience any corruption after a crash, because journal recovery is supposed to keep data structures consistent.

    Not only that, but NO filesystem, journalling or not, should cause a kernel crash if it is corrupted.

    Microsoft has done one thing well, and that is to lower the expectations of their users so far, that what should have been a few second journal recovery turned into a big outage and manual recovery of a massively corrupted filesystem, and that gains them "Absolute respect".

  12. Re:My preview of ReFS by reasterling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use linux (arch linux) on all my machines. I agree with you that this will break interoperability, but even I (a die hard linux user) recognize that Microsoft has a right to try to improve their file system. NTFS has been around a long time (version 1.0 released in 1993). Sometimes laying an old project to rest and starting new is the right choice. This does not mean that they are doing this to break "system rescue cd" or some other live linux environment.

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