Windows 8’s Resilient File System (ReFS) Gets Detailed

Windows 8 is bound to bring along a wide range of changes from the previous versions of Microsoft’s client. Some of them will affect the storage capabilities of the platform as well. 

The platform brings along a newly engineered file system, which sports the name of ReFS (Resilient File System). Built on NTFS, it offers backwards compatibility while ensuring that the platform benefits from a new generation of storage technologies and scenarios. 

In a recent blog post on MSDN, Surendra Verma, a development manager on Microsoft’s Storage and File System team, explains what the new file system in Windows 8 is all about and what it can deliver to  

users.  

When developing ReFS, Microsoft focused on providing increased compatibility with a subset of NTFS features that had enjoyed wide adoption. 

Moreover, the company ensured that data verification and auto-correction were in place so that data wouldn’t get corrupted. If it does, it has to be automatically corrected. 

Surendra Verma also notes that ReFS was optimized for extreme scale and that the file system is not taken offline. When corruptions occur, the fault will have to be isolated, while the rest of the volume remains accessible. 

Additionally, ReFS is fully compatible with the new Storage Spaces feature that Microsoft detailed not too long ago. The file system can provide a full end-to-end resiliency architecture when used in conjunction with Storage Spaces. 

Some of the main features of ReFS include:

• Metadata integrity with checksums
• Integrity streams providing optional user data integrity
• Allocate on write transactional model for robust disk updates (also known as copy on write)
• Large volume, file and directory sizes
• Storage pooling and virtualization makes file system creation and management easy
• Data striping for performance (bandwidth can be managed) and redundancy for fault tolerance
• Disk scrubbing for protection against latent disk errors
• Resiliency to corruptions with "salvage" for maximum volume availability in all cases
• Shared storage pools across machines for additional failure tolerance and load balancing

Moreover, ReFS comes with a series of features that are present in NTFS as well, including BitLocker encryption, access-control lists for security, symbolic links, junction points, volume snapshots, file IDs, and more.

Microsoft has also ensured that all data stored on ReFS is currently accessible through the same file access APIs on all clients and platforms that can now access NTFS volumes.

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 M3 can be downloaded via this link.

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