The 'New' File System in Windows: ReFS

Well it's not exactly new, but it's still rare!

▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - How is it Resilient?
3:32 - ReFS Features
3:38 - Block Cloning
4:26 - Sparse VDL
5:28 - Mirror Accelerated Parity
7:17 - File Level Snapshots
8:06 - Features NOT in ReFS
10:32 - Are You Missing Out?

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[ThioJoe]

Correction: You CAN actually format a single drive with ReFS, it does not need to be part of a pool.

[ItsBigManCallum]

hey babe wake up a new file system just dropped

[_SJ]

I appreciate your honesty in telling that you're not familiar on other features like Sparse VDL 👍🏻

[ckingpro]

So NTFS already has spare files, which means files only take as much space as are written to (reading other areas of the allocated space just returns zeros). But once written, you can't undo that so if you want to clear that region, you have to actually write zeros all over. Sparse VDL allows you to essentially make those areas sparse again in a sense (allowing you to zero regions of a file without actually writing zeros) making it much faster

[marinustennapel]

I'm still hoping that Microsoft will adopt OpenZFS (of which they are a member, if I'm not mistaken) ZFS does everything that ReFS does. And more. And better.

[graealex]

Yeah, don't use ReFS, unless you want your data held hostage by Microsoft.
Unfortunately, there is currently no other file system than FAT32 or exFAT that allows you universal access from all major platforms. NTFS is at least a viable compromise.

[georgeh]

ReFS sounds very similar to ZFS on Linux, *BSD, etc. Except ZFS does support native compression and encryption, is bootable, and can be used with any distribution which supports it (for free!). I use ZFS encrypted root partition on my laptop and it works great.

[the-niker]

You can use ReFS on a single drive in enterprise, it's in the format dialog. But if you do that you put your data at risk, if there is a catastrophic failure and the partition metadata get corrupted, there is currently no free way to recover your data and chkdsk won't save you. Lost entire 2TB drive during a power outage and eventually had to give up the (non-critical) data and wipe it.

[BluemediaDE]

ReFS is primarily intended for enterprise environments. It is especially worthwhile on hypervisors for storing VM disks, as well as for backup repositories. Block cloning allows you to create synthetic full backups, or to merge incremental backups without rewriting the data, which makes it incredibly performant compared to other file systems. ReFS is also used as the basis for Storage Spaces Direct and Azure Stack HCI, where storage arrays are distributed across multiple servers.

[exid]

Another warning for enthusiasts!
ReFS has different versions that are not backwards compatible. Sometimes when you upgrade a version of Windows or mount an array to a newer version of Windows, the version of the ReFS on your volume will be automatically updated without any warning. You will NOT be able to use this volume with an earlier version of Windows, even if the volume itself was created by it.
Do not use refs if it is possible that you will be moving this volume between systems.

[mosqqiko]

Kudos man. You kept it very simple and helped make the first steps in soft soft. Very Helpfull! Thanks!

[markgoodrich]

I thought perhaps the mention of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks, and their levels/variations) might have helped to explain things in this particular subject area of file systems. Again, just a thought. Love your channel, Joe!

[U.S.A.]

9:57 On Windows 11 I was able to format a single drive to ReFS so I don't think so that there is such a limitation, you can also format external HDDs to ReFS because Windows sees them as non-removable disks, but you really can't format pendrives and micro SD cards to ReFS.

[Doso]

ReFS is pretty useful for some server applications. For example block cloning helps to save a lot of space and processing time in backup repositories. The space savings can also be huge on things like VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

[psa]

Thanks, Joe. This type of video helps those who have maybe heard of ReFS and that it might be great, or not, to know why or why not we might want to look into it.

[cmilkau]

Thanks for the link about Sparse VDL! Boy, I'd never have found that. So hard to find information about this feature!

[bazoo]

5:05 - If I understand correctly, ReFS is able to _present_ allocated, but newer written to, clusters as containing zeroes. So, when you create, say, a 200 GB file that will contain a VM disk volume, it will be allocated, but not overwritten. However, if the VM reads a "virgin" cluster, the FS will return all zeroes, not whichever leftover from previous content was actually there, thus dramatically speeding up creation of huge empty files without compromising security.

[snarkykat]

I was wondering about this file system - thanks for covering it. 😄 By the way, there is something strange with the audio equalization for this video compared to your other videos. Your S's aren't coming out as crisply as before. Either that or someone stuck meat probes in my ears while I was sleeping. [Edit: The problem traced to the fact that every time there's a Windows feature update, it wipes out my equalizer settings 🤬]

[therealdebater]

9:40 Yes, that's a very good way to describe the swap file ('overflow for memory'). In general, trying to explain this kind of stuff to the layman is pretty hard, so good job!

[the__man]

didnt know about this, good to know! i love the position you take with the videos, somewhere between average tech user and programmer. it allows a lot more depth and meaningful information to be given about the topic, while still being in a condensed and easily digestable format