Introducing New ReFS For Windows 8/ Server 2012

ReFS (Resilient File System) is a new file system in Windows after the normally known FAT (File Allocation Table) and NTFS (New Technology File System). ReFS comes with Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.

ReFS is specifically intended for managing extremely large data volumes. In extreme cases, if ReFS finds that it can't repair data corruption, it isolates the bad data away from the healthy portion of the volume to keep the volume online and available to users. Nice....




NTFS is still in use as well! ReFS is intended only for a special use case: large data volumes on file servers. NTFS is still the default file system choice in Windows Server 2012, and it is intended for all other general purpose file system needs. In fact, if you want ReFS, you'll have to specifically request it when formatting your volume, as shown below ...




Is ReFS compatible with NTFS?

Yes it is!  ReFS was designed for API-level compatibility with NTFS
It means that business applications that access files locally or via file shares can continue to do so unchanged, even if the files are sitting on a volume formatted with the ReFS file system. However, there are a few special file system features that are not supported with ReFS and are only available with NTFS.