Solved REFs or NTFS or?

Deleted member 952 · Feb 10, 2022

Hi,

What drive format do you guys use for windows 11, REFs or NTFS or any other format?

Thanks

The-Hive · Feb 10, 2022

NTFS

Berton · Feb 10, 2022

NTFS. The issue with FAT32 is in creating a partition size limit of 32GB and single file size of 4GB. Haven't tried exFAT as the Boot/System partition. Windows can handle larger drives formatted as FAT32 [have one of 500GB] but have to be done on a Linux machine or using the bootable GPARTED LiveCD. All of the USB Thumb drives, up at least to 256GB, come factory-formatted as FAT32, haven't checked larger yet. My MacBook with Mac OS X couldn't write to NTFS-formatted drives but could read them, haven't worked with the newer macOS yet.

hsehestedt · Feb 10, 2022

ReFS? That's not even an option. Win 11 can read an ReFS volume, but you cannot create one. The only exception is the Pro for Workstations and Enterprise editions of Windows. There are simply too many limitations to ReFS.

Personally, I use NTFS everywhere, except maybe very small thumb drives.

cute two · Feb 10, 2022

spapakons · Feb 10, 2022

Since Windows Vista all Windows default format is NTFS, FAT32 is not supported for the OS partition, only for other partitions. ReFS must be chosen, I am not sure if you can select it during installation. What would be the benefit anyway?

Deleted member 952 · Feb 10, 2022

Read a lot on REFs recently and I think I'll pick NTFS even though REFs is newer technology. Resilient File System (ReFS) overview

hsehestedt · Feb 10, 2022

kuyenmotdivad said:
Read a lot on REFs recently and I think I'll pick NTFS even though REFs is newer technology. Resilient File System (ReFS) overview

Again, ReFS is no longer an option. It was removed starting with the 2017 Fall Creator's Update of Windows 10 except in Pro for Workstations and Enterprise editions. You can still read ReFS partitions, but cannot create them. Also, in those OS versions and editions that support ReFS, you cannot install Windows on an ReFS partition.

AdvancedSetup · Feb 10, 2022

The ability to create ReFS volumes was removed in Windows 10's 2017 Fall Creators Update for all editions except Enterprise and Pro for Workstations

ReFS

ReFS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Removed features

Some NTFS features are not implemented in ReFS. These include object IDs, 8.3 filename, NTFS compression, Encrypting File System (EFS), transactional NTFS, extended attributes, and disk quotas.[6][2][16] In addition, Windows cannot be booted from a ReFS volume.[2] Dynamic disks with mirrored or striped volumes are replaced with mirrored or striped storage pools provided by Storage Spaces; however, automated error-correction is only supported on mirrored spaces. Data deduplication was missing in early versions of ReFS.[2] It was implemented in v3.2, debuting in Windows Server v1709.[3]

Support for alternate data streams and hard links was initially not implemented in ReFS. In Windows 8.1 64-bit and Server 2012 R2 the file system reacquired support for alternate data streams only, with lengths of up to 128K, and automatic correction of corruption when integrity streams are used on parity spaces.[17] ReFS had initially been unsuitable for Microsoft SQL Server instance allocation due to the absence of alternate data streams.[18]

File system

File system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Windows makes use of the FAT, NTFS, exFAT, Live File System and ReFS file systems (the last of these is only supported and usable in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10; Windows cannot boot from it).

Windows uses a drive letter abstraction at the user level to distinguish one disk or partition from another. For example, the path C:\WINDOWS represents a directory WINDOWS on the partition represented by the letter C.
Drive C: is most commonly used for the primary hard disk drive partition, on which Windows is usually installed and from which it boots. This "tradition" has become so firmly ingrained that bugs exist in many applications which make assumptions that the drive that the operating system is installed on is C.

The use of drive letters, and the tradition of using "C" as the drive letter for the primary hard disk drive partition, can be traced to MS-DOS, where the letters A and B were reserved for up to two floppy disk drives. This in turn derived from CP/M in the 1970s, and ultimately from IBM's CP/CMS of 1967.

spapakons · Feb 10, 2022

Do it is best to just forget ReFS and stick with good old NTFS.

ZhuMa · Feb 15, 2022

Two years ago, I predicted that Windows Server 2022 will support ReFS boot, just like Windows 8 started to support exFAT boot that year.
In fact, Windows Server 2022 and it's bootx64.efi already natively supports ReFS boot.

Now, I have successfully installed and booted Windows system in ReFS partition, I was the first to research the ReFS file system boot. ReFS boot has been enabled as experimental hidden feature from Windows 10 Dev Build 20185, It is the first system to support ReFS boot.
This is a detailed installation tutorial I wrote in Simplified Chinese (because I am from China)
http://bbs.wuyou.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=426202&mobile=no
I appologize for my grammatical mistake because English isn't my main language.
Note:
To access this forum by non-Chinese IP, you need to modify the "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" file and add:
117.25.130.178 bbs.c3.wuyou.net
117.25.130.178 bbs.wuyou.net
117.25.130.178 wuyou.net

spapakons · Feb 16, 2022

Do you see any benefit using ReFS instead of NTFS? Is it faster? Is it more secure? Otherwise why bother?

Toad004 · Jul 21, 2022

Unless you've got some 1337 hacking skills, you won't even be able to create a ReFS drive in Windows 11, let alone boot from one.

But it can still read and use them, the best way I found is to boot into Hiren's Boot CD (called such because in the long long ago it actually was a CD).

I've got these 5 drives on my PC.
A: is the system drive, and as such must be NTFS.
B: is the backup drive, nothing is on it but drive images. It's REFS.
C: is where the applications are installed. It's also NTFS.
E: Only large media files are on this drive. It's got a very high cluster size only allowed by exFAT.
F: is where all the smaller media files go so as to not waste space. It's NTFS.

spapakons · Jul 22, 2022

As I said, why bother? Just forget it and keep using NTFS

Toad004 · Jul 22, 2022

spapakons said:
As I said, why bother? Just forget it and keep using NTFS

NTFS's compatibility with other OSes isn't as good as exFAT, not to mention the clustersizes can be set much higher on the letter. Useful if you've got a drive dedicated to large files.

So yes, there are reasons to use formats other than NTFS.

spapakons · Jul 22, 2022

I hardly use another OS besides Windows, so I don't care. If I ever need to access an NTFS disk from Linux or Android or Mac OS I run the appropriate commands to enable full NTFS access and use it like a native disk.

Toad004 · Jul 22, 2022

spapakons said:
I hardly use another OS besides Windows, so I don't care. If I ever need to access an NTFS disk from Linux or Android or Mac OS I run the appropriate commands to enable full NTFS access and use it like a native disk.

"there are reasons to use formats other than NTFS" =/= "there are reasons for you, personally, to use NTFS"
Sounds like none of them apply to you. But others reading the thread could well have those reasons apply to them.

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