Is ReFS ready for prime-time?

[BeardedBlunder]

Microsoft make lots of claims about how wonderful and robust ReFS is, yet if I google "ReFS corrupt" there's no shortage of results with persons seeking help.

I may be cynical, but I'm reminded of the claims M$ made about NTFS not needing defragmenting with NT3.x, and Diskeeper corp. nee. Executive Software was born.. it took till NT4 for Microsoft to provide an API, and NT5 to supply a tool...

There seems to be a parallel, in fact the tools to fix corrupt ReFS are the very same as fragmented NTFS under NT3.x, copy your data elsewhere, format, and copy it back...

Personally I think I'll hold off deploying ReFS until there's at least a tool to check it.. preferably a native one.

[HarryTri]

I agree with you. If you have seen some episodes of "Mayday" you know that "failsafe" isn't really failsafe. I think in this world nothing can be really failsafe.

[jaclaz]

Well, our friend NoelC has it in production since quite a bit and he seemed like happy about  it:

But you are right, it is definitely not ready for prime time and the lack of suitable tools make it - to say the least - a risky option when compared to NTFS.

jaclaz

[UCyborg]

So much for ReFS' self-healing capabilities.

Edited September 7, 2017 by UCyborg

[Mcinwwl]

jaclaz - thanks for linking the topic. As far as I get it, there will be no noticeable advantage of ReFS over NTFS for average PC user... or even wanna-be-geeky user, who doesn't plan to store Terabytes of data?

Edited September 10, 2017 by Mcinwwl
major typo

[jaclaz]

15 hours ago, Mcinwwl said:

jaclaz - thanks for linking the topic. As far as I get it, there will be no noticeable advantage of ReFS over NTSC for average PC user... or even wanna-be-geeky user, who doesn't plan to store Terabytes of data?

NTSC?

You mean NTFS, right?

And of course we are already in the Petabyte range ... 

But seriously, I believe ReFS to be an excellent filesystem, but until it isn't better documented, suitable checking tools are provided, etc., etc. it is simply not ready for "common" use.

jaclaz

[Mcinwwl]

You got me there Fixed.

[NoelC]

It's like they got it most of the way there then just abandoned polishing the edges so it could be used mainstream.

For what it's worth I've never had a lick of trouble with it.  I ended up using ReFS for years on both external and internal data drives.  One of them is chronically full, and it seemed to me it didn't get as bogged-down as NTFS does when you run a drive nearly full, but honestly I've not done any objective testing to give that feeling any credence.

-Noel

[war59312]

No not ready for prime time as ReFS isn't yet bootable.

Also, Microsoft just removed most support for it via Windows 10 Fall Creators Update : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4034825/features-that-are-removed-or-deprecated-in-windows-10-fall-creators-up

Quote

 

Resilient File System (ReFS)

Creation ability will be available in the following editions only: Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Pro for Workstations.

Creation ability will be removed from all other editions.  All other editions will have Read and Write ability.

 

You also lose a good amount of functionality as seen @ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/refs/refs-overview 

[jaclaz]

Well, it is a filesystem aimed to storage, and it makes sense that it will be reserved to "high end" editions of Windows.

Nothing "wrong" in the fact that a "common" user (which wold anyway have no  practical use for it) is prevented from creating a new filesystem.

BUT there is something really interesting in the doc you linked to:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4034825/features-that-are-removed-or-deprecated-in-windows-10-fall-creators-up

Quote

Outlook Express

Removing this non-functional legacy code.

at last Microsoft realized what is the real nature of Outlook Express .

jaclaz

[Mcinwwl]

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Nothing "wrong" in the fact that a "common" user (which wold anyway have no  practical use for it) is prevented from creating a new filesystem.

The only 'Wrong' thing is that they're taking away a thing, that was previously given, forbidding Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Professional from creating ReFS partitions, and moving it to more expensive Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Professional for Workstations. Keep in mind that 'common' users probably don't understand the power that is provided with their Windows 10 Home edition and don't know what a filesystem is, and Windows Pro is 'officially' targeting small business, or at least passionates and hobbyists.

Which looks like, again someone within M$ decided to make slightly more money using bad tricks and their near-monopolist position in PC market. Which they are known for.

[jaclaz]

33 minutes ago, Mcinwwl said:

The only 'Wrong' thing is that they're taking away a thing, that was previously given, forbidding Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Professional from creating ReFS partitions, and moving it to more expensive Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Professional for Workstations. Keep in mind that 'common' users probably don't understand the power that is provided with their Windows 10 Home edition and don't know what a filesystem is, and Windows Pro is 'officially' targeting small business, or at least passionates and hobbyists.

Which looks like, again someone within M$ decided to make slightly more money using bad tricks and their near-monopolist position in PC market. Which they are known for.

Sure, but still, it is a non-problem in practice.

With the only exception of NoelC, noone on this board EVER used it (or if anyone did, they were pretty quiet on the matter).

It should mean something about the popularity of the filesystem among both "common" users and "geeky peeps" and in any case I am pretty sure that the latter category would find a way to create a REFS filesystem (by using -say - a VM with an earlier-than-Fall-Creators-Update-version of Windows 10 in - still say -  a VM).

On other (old) news, when they released XP the demented MS guys did remove something useful (the Wang/Kodak Imaging tool) that was a nice (very popular) tool on 9x and NT/2K, and, in no time, each and every "geeky peep" on the internet managed to port the 2K version to XP (and a subset of the "geeky peeps" also use it on Vista and 7 ):

http://kakopa.webcindario.com/imaging/

that was a problem, and it has been solved just fine, when/if making a REFS will become a problem, surely a workaround will be found.

As said they also removed Outlook Express, doing the same operation (taking away a thing, that was previously given) but I don't think anyone will be whining about this removal.

jaclaz

 

[Mcinwwl]

12 minutes ago, jaclaz said:

that was a problem, and it has been solved just fine, when/if making a REFS will become a problem, surely a workaround will be found.

Sure. However, this still does not calm down my mind, as it will be a workaround not for the problem that just occurred, but the one that is purposely generated using some licence/legal dirty tricks. It simply harms my inner naive idealist.

Reference to Outlook Express is quite not fitting, as this piece of software is certainly not secure, self-maintaing or any other adjectives, that marketing couples with ReFS ^^.

[jaclaz]

39 minutes ago, Mcinwwl said:

Sure. However, this still does not calm down my mind, as it will be a workaround not for the problem that just occurred, but the one that is purposely generated using some licence/legal dirty tricks. It simply harms my inner naive idealist.

Reference to Outlook Express is quite not fitting, as this piece of software is certainly not secure, self-maintaing or any other adjectives, that marketing couples with ReFS ^^.

Well, if you trust (even slightly and only partially) marketing, you have actual reasons to be not calm .

JFYI, from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20101127235326/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2419492

Quote

Best of both worlds

Once you have configured default clients, you are still able to use both Outlook and Outlook Express, even at the same time. In fact this is what I do all day long. All my work-related e-mail accounts are configured in Outlook so that I can keep better track of business correspondence and link it to appointments and contacts. My personal e-mail accounts that I use in combination with newsgroups are configured in Outlook Express. Since I love the ease and simplicity of Outlook Express, and also love the information management and Junk Mail of Outlook, the combination truly lets me enjoy the best of both worlds.

jaclaz

[Mcinwwl]

Knowing how good you are in fetching most... bizarre parts of internet, form your vast archives, makes me worried about what might happen with my posts in near future :>