Windows 11 24H2/25H2 Supports Being Installed To And Booting Natively From ReFS

As the title says...
Version 24H2/25H2 seems to fully support being installed to and booting from an ReFS system drive.
Everything seems to work fine, tried upgrading to the latest Canary build from 25H2 to check if in-place upgrades would work.. they do.

So far the only thing that does not work is system restore, which throws out a weird error.
Everything else works.

Build 27954.1 ships a newer version of ReFS, 3.15.


Note: For obvious reasons I am testing this on a VM.

ReFS doesn't support encrypted folders and files, so that will break paid Store apps. CompactOS is not available, or extended file attributes.

TechnoFlash7560 said:

As the title says...
Version 24H2/25H2 seems to fully support being installed to and booting from an ReFS system drive.
Everything seems to work fine, tried upgrading to the latest Canary build from 25H2 to check if in-place upgrades would work.. they do.

So far the only thing that does not work is system restore, which throws out a weird error.
Everything else works.

Build 27954.1 ships a newer version of ReFS, 3.15.


Note: For obvious reasons I am testing this on a VM.

Click to expand...

and boot time improved? Is it faster in any way or the same as NTFS?

e o tempo de boot melhorou? É mais rápido de alguma forma ou igual ao NTFS?

winbtrfs support boot win too

NTFS vs. ReFS is the comparison of two Microsoft file systems: NTFS is the older, default choice for general use, providing robust security and backward compatibility, while ReFS is a newer system designed for extreme reliability and scalability in enterprise environments, offering advanced features like automatic corruption correction[/URL], and massive volume support, though it lacks some NTFS features and is not suitable for system drives.



NTFS (New Technology File System)

Purpose: The standard, default file system for most Windows installations.

Key Features:

Security: Strong access control lists (ACLs) and file permissions.

Compatibility: High compatibility with previous Windows versions and various devices.

Journaling: Provides data integrity through journaling, but lacks advanced self-repair.


Limitations: May struggle with extremely large datasets and lacks some of ReFS's modern data integrity features.

ReFS (Resilient File System)

Purpose:
Designed for large-scale data storage and virtualization in enterprise-level environments.

Key Features:

Data Integrity: Uses checksums for metadata and data to detect and automatically correct file system corruption, working with Storage Spaces.

Scalability: Supports significantly larger file and volume sizes compared to NTFS, up to 35 PB.

Resilience: Features like "copy-on-write" prevent data loss during power failures, and proactive "scrubbers" scan for errors.



Limitations:

Compatibility: Not fully supported on all Windows versions and cannot be used for system drives.

Features: Lacks features like file system compression, disk quotas, and Encrypted File System (EFS).


When to Use Which

Use NTFS for:

Standard desktops and laptops.

Boot drives.

Situations requiring file compression, disk quotas, or encryption.


Use ReFS for:

Large-scale storage systems and data-intensive applications.

Enterprise environments with virtualization and Storage Spaces integration.

Any scenario where data integrity and resilience are paramount.