News Microsoft details Windows 8's ReFS file system

And they said no one would ever need more than 640KB...

 

274 billion terrabytes Just to think... some day... some kid will have a 274 billion terrabyte SSD and will complain that it's too small.

 

^ Agreed. May take a few years yet for that, but compared to the meager 2GB hardrive powering my first PC in 1996, I don't doubt it.

 

The main thing... For those of you who want this feature in your PCs just because it is new... we have a word to describe this kind of users, we call them NOOBS. Yep, jut because something is new does not mean it is good and even if itis goood, it is not necessarily good for YOU, this kind of snapshooting FSs are not exactly efficient when it comes to say, gaming or video processing. even databases! yes, BTRFS is a bad idea for a DB, even ZFS, which is in my opinion the best FS available for many things is not the best at all when it comes to Databases (random seek + RT + Sync R/RW IO + snapshooting = oh no no no)
Just the same thing happens with Linux desktop users going for BTRFS, it is usually a very very bad idea. Yes, plenty of people preach the marvels of snapshoting, hard/soft-links and hybrid FSs, but in the real world, most people, even those who think themselves 'advanced' will never go read the documentation to understand and know how to use them.

About hardlinks, I have two things to say, 1) Soft links are superior, 2) I dont feel like explaining it, go read the Wiki or something, or believe me blindly (bad).

About the "OMG what kind of useless crap is that sh*t if it does not even boot!"... This too depends on the partition table format and the capabilities of the BIOS to boot the FS and to understand the table. Microsoft could probably just use NTFS compatibility to make ReFS bootable, or adopt a better partitioning table instead of the obsolete msdos format.... maybe Miccrosoft will just adopt the BSD style table!.... hold on we are talking about M$, they never have good ideas of their own and they never work with anything non propietary... and they never work with something that has not been tested only by them and exclusively by them, so the hell with M$ but I hope they open support for other OSes, even make it opensource why now... .... yeah sure, dream on...

and... I was going to say something more but forgot, I havent sleep in two days, actually Im off to bed now....

 

Doesn't need to be bootable; that's what your 100mB hidden NTFS partition is for (in the default layout).

 

Actually this is Windows repair tools, in the case you lose or don't have with you, the OS disk.

 

I quite like the idea of a future where my own data no longer destroys itself.

 

No, it is where the BCD bootloader is located, which is why it's the active/system partition.

Windows repair tools are stored in the recovery folder on your OS partition.

 

active/system partition is my System partition (where Windows is installed).
I just loaded a partition disk software, and I don't see such boot partition.

System is Windows including the BCD, and Recovery is auto created by the setup, which has the recovery part of the system.

I don't see an independent partition. I looked on a third computer, which is the most default setup you can possibly ask: clean HDD, no added partition manually. It has 2 partition, Recovery and Windows (has everything like any default config computers).

In fact, if you simply show hidden folder and show hidden system folders, in the folder option panel, you can see on the C:\ drive that you have: BOOTSECT.BAK, bootmgr, and a Boot directory complete with BCD system file.

Hidden partition doesn't offer any security, it just makes "My Computer" location, nicer. Like hiding files and folders. They are still accessible by anything, just hidden. (Well for partition it requires a bit of work, but still possible).

 

This explains what I'm talking about:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg441289.aspx

If you can't see it on any of your win7 machines, you most likely installed to a single partition rather than a disk, which sorts out the partition layout automatically.

What I'm trying to get at is that MS have said you cannot boot to REFS, however if we were to have an NTFS system partition with a boot loader that is REFS-aware, we could potentially boot an OS installed on REFS. I can't find any info to confirm this, but it's early days.

 

Ah ok I see.. maybe it doesn't do it, because I have Pro edition of Win7, and not Ultimate.
It's clear that it needs to do this, because how do you decrypt a whole drive to access the OS.

 

Other than it needs defragmenting (on a hard disk) and takes up loads of space formating. Switch to EXT4 and make us all happy.

 

Every drive format you need to defrag. Basics of how storage works. Even your RAM needs defragmentation... well... on the RAM data isn't split into 2 or more.. it's more having the total free space, but no space to insert anything in 1 block. No mater how you see it it needs defragmenting, which takes time, and loads of space. In the case of your RAM, it's the exact size of the RAM on your HDD.

If you find a way to make a file system that doesn't need any defrag (or just solve the need of data block splitting , you will revolutionize the tech industry. So far, since the early days of computers, no one found any better way the what was specified back in the early UNIX days. All file system is based on that method, with minor tweaks, and added stuff like security (in a nut shell).

 

The boot up restriction is in the BIOS and the boot loader. GRUB can boot anything for which it has a driver (module), Microsoft could just adopt Grub2 and problem solved but they never use anything that is not closed and from them, that is one of the things that I dislike so much about them, like why no to include default support for ogg and flac? well because they want to make money of their own format... if only Microsoft would worry a lot more about technology and a hell lot less about making money (the greed machine)
.

Anyway, there are many excellent FSs that are non bootable, File systems are like scalpels, there are different sizes and they all fit different needs, and of course we have the swiss knives that can do anything and excell at nothing. It is not possible to create a FS that fits all and every need in use today, either for SSD or HDs or other storage devices.

Somebody blames their data vanishes like magic from drive? sorry but that doesn'tt happen, with all honesty NTFS is NOT a bad FS even if ageing. So dont blame the FS or the computer, it is most likely a user fault, or very low end computer parts, I have ran several servers and pcs in my life and have seen an FS corruption only once and it was with ReiserFS, which is actally a much better FS than NTFS.

Also about the defrag, no, not ALL drives require defragmentation, in the case of SSDs it is called relocation, and some modern FSs do NOT need a manual defragmentation since this defrag is made on the fly and in real time.

One more correction, ram is not defragmented, system simply alocate whatever the pointers indicate, and in case something does not fit , there is a cache ram part. ram divides in occupied blocks, cache blocks and free bocks. Your confussion may come from the fact that many applications reserve certain range of blocks, and if no such range is available, some other data cells are relocated, but a defragmentation per se does not exist in ram


Finally, FSs like REFS or BTRFS are animals of a diferent class than ext or ntfs, and different from ZFS and XFS. It is cats vs whales vs robin birds.

Personally, although I welcome an additional FS as long as it is open or at least OS agnostic... I would rather promote the standarization of ZFS in all the three main OSes, it is already on its ways for Linux, and unixes it is already native, it is only mac and MS that would require work but the source code is already available. using standards is a good idea... why MS never follows them unless it is enforced? oh the misteries of life...