History of ReFS
Microsoft introduced ReFS in September 2012, when it released Windows Server 2012 as an optional file system to account for larger data storage requirements and larger workloads. Microsoft added ReFS to desktop versions of Windows starting with Windows 8.1 in October 2013 but could only be used as part of the drive-pooling Storage Spaces feature. And is also included in Windows 10. Microsoft removed the ability to create ReFS volumes in Windows 10 in its 2017 Fall Creators Update, except for Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. But the OS will still read ReFS.
How ReFS works
ReFS is highly compatible with NTFS and was built on the base of NTFS for more consistency & better data integrity. If the OS detects a system error & data is lost/corrupted then ReFS can restore the lost/corrupted data. The ReFS also combats bit rot i.e. the corruption of bits in a file system with time, through disk scrubbing tasks that read and validate data. Microsoft had used part of the NTFS codebase to produce ReFS & added support for Win32 APIs so that existing APIs are compatible, giving ReFS support for several features, such as access control lists & file IDs. In NTFS, there are different reasons for file metadata corruption, such as an abrupt system shutdown during power loss, or when the system only writes part of a block. To avoid data damage ReFS uses allocate-on-write technique, which reads & writes files in a single instruction. The allocate-on-write technique uses thin provision clones of the source databases to reduce the chances of corruption. A B+ tree structure is used by ReFS for the management of data through metadata indexing. The tree consists of the root, internal nodes, and leaves. A B+ tree stores data in a branching pattern, where each node in the tree has an ordered list of keys and pointers to lower-level nodes or leaves. Records are stored at the leaf level, which allows for more branches. This process lowers disk I/O and provides better performance. ReFS is not a direct replacement for NTFS. ReFS does not support some NTFS features, such as master file table (MFT), page file support and object IDs. Some applications will only work with features only available on NTFS. Many NTFS features were not part of the earlier version of NTFS, such as alternative streams, named streams and sparse files, which Microsoft added to ReFS in later updates.
Notable features and changes
Drawbacks to ReFS
All these features sound pretty good, but you can’t just switch to ReFS from NTFS.
How to Use ReFS
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