The Resilient File System (ReFS) is Microsoft's newest file system, designed to maximize data availability, scale efficiently to large data sets across diverse workloads, and provide data integrity with resiliency to corruption. It seeks to address an expanding set of storage scenarios and establish a foundation for future innovations.
Limits
| Feature | ReFS | NTFS |
|---|
| Maximum file name length | 255 Unicode characters | 255 Unicode characters |
| Maximum path name length | 32K Unicode characters | 32K Unicode characters |
| Maximum file size | 35 PB (petabytes) | 256 TB |
| Maximum volume size | 35 PB | 256 TB |
Functionality
The following features are available with ReFS and NTFS:
| Feature | ReFS | NTFS |
|---|
| BitLocker encryption | Yes | Yes |
| Data Deduplication | Yes1 | Yes |
| Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) support | Yes2 3 | Yes |
| Junctions/Soft links | Yes | Yes |
| Hard links | Yes4 | Yes |
| Failover cluster support | Yes | Yes |
| Access-control lists | Yes | Yes |
| USN journal | Yes | Yes |
| Changes notifications | Yes | Yes |
| Junction points | Yes | Yes |
| Mount points | Yes | Yes |
| Reparse points | Yes | Yes |
| Volume snapshots | Yes | Yes |
| File IDs | Yes | Yes |
| Oplocks | Yes | Yes |
| Sparse files | Yes | Yes |
| Named streams | Yes | Yes |
| Thin Provisioning | Yes5 | Yes |
| Trim/Unmap | Yes5 | Yes |
| Page file support | Yes6 | Yes |
- Available on Windows Server, version 1709 and later, Windows Server 2019 (1809) LTSC or later.
- Available on Windows Server 2012 R2 and later.
- CSV will not use Direct I/O with Storage Spaces, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) or SAN.
- Version ReFS 3.5 formatted by Windows 10 Enterprise Insider Preview build 19536 and later. Hard links support is added for newly formatted volumes only. Hard links can't be used on volumes that have been upgraded from previous versions
- Storage Spaces only.
- Available on ReFS 3.7 and later.
The following features are only available with ReFS:
| Functionality | ReFS | NTFS |
|---|
| Block clone | Yes | No |
| Sparse VDL | Yes | No |
| Mirror-accelerated parity | Yes (on Storage Spaces Direct) | No |
| File-level snapshots | Yes1 | No |
- Available on Windows Server 2022 and later.
The following features are unavailable on ReFS at this time:
| Functionality | ReFS | NTFS |
|---|
| File system compression | No | Yes |
| File system encryption | No | Yes |
| Transactions | No | Yes |
| Object IDs | No | Yes |
| Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) | No | Yes |
| Short names | No | Yes |
| Extended attributes | No | Yes |
| Disk quotas | No | Yes |
| Bootable | No | Yes |
| Supported on removable media | No | Yes |
Reference
