Of all the legacy technologies that Microsoft has been dragging around for years, one element that never seems to get a chance to prove its worth outside of a professional environment is the ReFS file system that the company has been around for a long time. flight. But again, there are signs of a step forward that point to Windows 11.

To summarize the story, NTFS is the default file system for all versions of Windows. since Windows NT came on the scene, which will be 30 years since its release in 2023. In fact, NTFS appeared a year earlier, in 1992, and since then there is no version of Windows that does not adopt it, from the aforementioned NT series to Windows 05, Windows X or Windows 10 and 11, as well as everything that arose in between.

And it’s not that NTFS is a bad file system, the proof is that it’s still used with much better alternatives; but all the development it brought in its time was buried by everything that came after, and today NTFS is a hindrance, not a technology with a future. Without further ado, the annoying need to defragment hard drives that Windows suffered from has only disappeared – or been reduced – with the advent of solid state drives.

Be that as it may, it’s been a long time Microsoft has prepared its alternative to replace NTFS: ReFS (or Resilient File System, as opposed to NTFS New Technology File System). This alternative is so ready that ReFS has been tested in production environments with Windows Server 2012. The possibility of using it as a Windows 8 file system was even raised, although this idea was ultimately rejected due to…

Windows 11 on ReFS | Image: Windows latest

Well, because ReFS, even with all the advantages it provides compared to NTFS, also presents some limitations that NTFS does not have. Regarding these advantages and limitations of one file system or another, this Wikipedia article lists the main ones, reasons that are still valid today, although Microsoft continues to work on improving the most delicate ones for a desktop operating system whose requirements and needs are not the same as those of server.

We have included the link to the Wikipedia article because this file system is a very technically complex issue, as those who use Linux or Unix-type systems know, where both the range of alternatives and the technology in this regard are more advanced. Windows realm. The signs of a possible change in Windows and the possible adoption of ReFS, it’s worth repeating, however, are ringing again.

This is how they collect it in Windows Latest, where they reflect the introduction of support for ReFS in the latest development builds of Windows 11. Which, mind you, only means they’re testing, as they almost always are. But it’s not very common to receive news of this type, and who knows if they go beyond simply providing support for a new version of your operating system.

After all, what was possible to do with versions like Windows 8, but also Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, is to format the storage with ReFS and install the system on top. On my own, yes. That’s why the news has its interest. In case you’re wondering, two of the advantages of ReFS over NTS are data availability and storage scalability.