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[jmone]

All this talk on file systems, corrupt files etc had me look again at Resilient File System (ReFS) as a replacement to NTFS disks.  It seems:
1) 8.1 Supports ReFS Disks (not Boot and there are a few hacks to be able to format one under 8.1)
2) Drive Bender support ReFS

So I could format a fresh drive as ReFS, add it to pool and swap it with an existing NTFS drive are repeat till finished.

Am I missing any downsides?

[6233638]

I don't think ReFS supports the full feature-set of NTFS, so it may cause problems in some use cases.
 
I was not aware that it's just enabled via a registry tweak in Windows 8.1, rather than replacing system DLLs as you had to do in Windows 8.

However, I just tried enabling the registry tweak, which caused five new blank drives to be listed in My Computer (but not disk management) and a number of applications were throwing up errors when I logged in.
 
 
So I'll wait until there is official support for it.

[jmone]

My understanding is that the tweaks are just so you can format the drives.  Once done they are recognised just fine in Win8.1 OS, Disk Mgr etc.

It seems it has dropped support for "named streams, object IDs, short names, compression, file level encryption (EFS), user data transactions, sparse, hard-links, extended attributes, and quotas".  I'm OK on these but I'm not sure about "hard-links" and if the MS DVD Navigator issues are with ReFS or their implementation of pooling.

It must be pretty stable as it is rolled out formally as an option on the servers.

I may convert a disk this weekend and see what happens.

[6233638]

I think I have a spare drive which is blank right now, so I might give it a try.
If I only need to use the registry tweak to format the drive as ReFS and can then remove it, I'm fine with doing that.

Still very confused as to why five blank drives showed up in My Computer when I enabled it though - even when I set the value to 0 they were still there, I had to remove the MiniNT key entirely.

[astromo]

Nice work.

Keep us posted, please.. 

[jmone]

Ok - I used these instructions to format a new 4TB HDD as ReFS ... and it shows up in Disk Manger just fine.

Note: I was getting this error after rebooting and tried setting the "AllowRefsFormatOverNonmirrorVolume" to 0 but it still occured so I just deleted the key, rebooted and all seems fine.

Code: [Select]

eventmanager entry point not found point_except_handler4_common
I'm now doing a Drive Bender "Swap" from an NTFS drive to the ReFS drive and so far it looks good with read/writes hitting 165MB/S!

Will see how it all goes tomorrow.

[6233638]

Yes, that's what I used as well. I'm not sure why enabling that registry key is causing multiple blank disks to show up in My Computer, which do not appear in the Disk Manager.

However, after formatting a drive as ReFS and then removing the registry key, it seems to be working correctly.


I had hoped that Microsoft would enable ReFS officially with Windows 8.1, as it sounds like a good improvement over NTFS.

My main concern right now is compatibility with recovery tools, or trying to use the drive with anything that's not running Windows 8.1

If I had known that you only needed to add a registry key to enable this, I would probably have moved my media drives over to it back when I last added new drives to the system. I don't have the free space available to do this right now.

[jmone]

Yeah ReFS should be a GREAT improvement in reliability over NTFS if it does not break anything (eg DVD Navigator).  I only have a few DVDs for testing as most of my stuff is BD and I've no idea what physical drive the DVD are on.  Anyway, once the swap is done I'll have a better idea if any issues appear.  Touch Wood but Drive Bender is playing nice with the drive so far.

[jmone]

Well the DB drive swap ended very quickly but did not move all the files (I'm testing on a Beta so.....) I'm manually moving the rest of the content but the stuff that did copy did playback fine (BD Material). 

[glynor]

I just saw this thread and it is very relevant to my interests.

[jmone]

So far so good.  I'm just syncing the main pool to my WHS (should have done that first... just forgot) in case something goes wrong, and then will then convert another disk across to ReFS.

[jmone]

...let me know if you want me to check anything in particular

[jmone]

Ok - created the 2nd ReFS drive, added to the pool and now moving stuff of another NTFS drive.  Also here is a pic of the error I get when the MiniNT key is present.

[6233638]

From doing some more reading into it, you should definitely not leave that MiniNT key enabled - even if you aren't getting any errors right away.

But it seems to be fine to set it, format a drive, and then remove the key.
 
 
I really need to add another drive to my system - I was hoping those 6TB drives would be available by now, but I can't seem to get them here, and the prices elsewhere appear to be about 3x that of a 4TB disk.
Anyway, when I do, I think I'll start migrating everything over to ReFS if there don't seem to be any problems - I would assume that it's fine to use as it is currently available in Windows server.
I'm guessing the reason they're hiding it in the consumer version is because it's not yet fully compatible with NTFS' feature-set, and you can't boot from a ReFS drive.

I may give DriveBender another try once v2 is released. While my current storage solution works, it would be a lot more convenient to have everything pooled together.

[jmone]

Yup and one ReFS feature is to stop issues with missalocated clusters (which I've had en masse twice when CHKDSK kicked in post a sata card change).  No more CHKDSK ever!

[6233638]

An interesting read on ReFS and Storage Spaces: http://betanews.com/2014/01/15/windows-storage-spaces-and-refs-is-it-time-to-ditch-raid-for-good/

I think some people have reported problems when using Storage Spaces with Media Center though, so I'd be more inclined to use something like Drive Bender just now.

[Hendrik]

Storage Spaces is extremely limited in functionality, other then the very basics, it really can't do much, I would personally not advise using it.

[6233638]

I thought that would be the case.
 
Not that it should be a surprise to anyone, but OSX is unable to read my ReFS formatted drives.
So for now, it looks like I will be sticking to NTFS for my portable backup disks.
 
I actually like that when I plug an NTFS drive into a Mac it is read-only, as it means the data is completely safe. I know there are workarounds that let you write to an NTFS drive, but I'd rather leave it alone, and I'll take NTFS over exFAT any day.

[jmone]

I've now moved about 12TB from NTFS to ReFS drives and was starting on the 5th drive when I got a read error on the NTFS drive.  The offending M2TS file could not be, opened / played or even deleted directly etc (had to reboot and delete the folders above it).  This is exactly the sort of problems that should be history with ReFS!

Also - I tested playing a DVD Structure from a ReFS drive (pooled under DB) without any issues (unlike what others are having with Storage Spaces).

[Hendrik]

The offending M2TS file could not be, opened / played or even deleted directly etc (had to reboot and delete the folders above it).  This is exactly the sort of problems that should be history with ReFS!

Just to make sure, you do know that ReFS does not actually protect your data, all it does is store additional metadata to detect broken files immediately and be able to delete them without fuzz - so that you can restore them from backup without rebooting.
So yes, the forced reboot and the trouble deleting the file should probably not happen anymore, but data still breaks.

[jmone]

Yup, I do understand and I'm a big fan of full backups!  I have two 30TB+ Pools, one is my main for every day use, the second is in a physically separate location and I preview changes against them before committing - to help alleviate unintended deletes, as well as fire, theft etc.  I also dislike RAID in the home environment as people tend to think this is for backup over uptime.

[jmone]

From my reading ReFS should also help minimise the creation of corrupt files in the first place VS NTFS

What I don't know is what reporting (if any) ReFS does when it finds a corrupt file.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848060(v=vs.85).aspx

The key features of ReFS are:

Integrity: ReFS stores data so that it is protected from many of the common errors that can cause data loss. File system metadata is always protected. Optionally, user data can be protected on a per-volume, per-directory, or per-file basis. If corruption occurs, ReFS can detect and, when configured with Storage Spaces, automatically correct the corruption. In the event of a system error, ReFS is designed to recover from that error rapidly, with no loss of user data.

Availability: ReFS is designed to prioritize the availability of data. With ReFS, if corruption occurs, and it cannot be repaired automatically, the online salvage process is localized to the area of corruption, requiring no volume down-time. In short, if corruption occurs, ReFS will stay online.

Scalability: ReFS is designed for the data set sizes of today and the data set sizes of tomorrow; it’s optimized for high scalability.

App Compatibility: To maximize AppCompat, ReFS supports a subset of NTFS features plus Win32 APIs that are widely adopted.
Proactive Error Identification: The integrity capabilities of ReFS are leveraged by a data integrity scanner (a “scrubber”) that periodically scans the volume, attempts to identify latent corruption, and then proactively triggers a repair of that corrupt data.

More in their blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx

[jmone]

This is the experience (I had twice) that I'm keen never to repeat!

I'd finished all my ripping etc, the my new HighPoint 2720SGL arrived so I put the 6 x 4TB HDD on that, but after a couple of boots (during the installation) I got a CHCKDSK error
- Error detected in index $I30
       then a couple of hours of repeated
- recovering orphaned file xxx to directory xxxx

At first it all seemed fine but ... some files are stuffed.  It turns out that MC will fail to play say "song.mp3" and if I check it with media info it is actually a bit of a video!

......

   Sad day....

[jmone]

FYI - I'm beta testing the latest Drive Bender Beta and I'm having issues with the swap drive function going from a NTFS --> ReFS disk.  I've submitted logs to the Devs but but basically I've found:
- The DB Pool Unmounts (Unspecified reason)
- then I get an error that it can not copy the file

So what I do is "Force Remove" the NTFS drive from the pool (Windows then maps it as a drive) then use FreeFileSync to copy the data back into the Pool.  I've been checking the results with my backup pool and it has been 100%.

I've now on my last drive to convert, so will (in a few hours) have 30+TB / 750K items on ReFS. on 9 4TB HDD + 1 Spare.

Edit - I've had one set of NTFS read errors... Not surprisingly it was on a BD disk rip... --> "ET"

[jmone]

All done.... but it is one of those background changes.  I have know way of knowing if it is any good, unless it is not!

[jmone]

FYI - nothing to report really.  They are all running fine. 

Does anyone know if there is some "Event Viewer" equivalent for ReFS so you can visualise any actions that may have taken place?

[jmone]

To answer my own Q - I "guess" this is how to look at ReFS events (note: Event Viewer has a "ReFS" as a source) but as my number of events is 0 I don't know if it is good nothing has happened or that they are just not logged.

[RD James]

I've been using ReFS for a while without any problems on Windows 8.1 and suddenly after using Windows 10 for a few weeks I get "<File> is not accessible. The volume repair was not successful." when trying to access all files on one of my drives. May or may not be a coincidence that it happened within weeks of upgrading to 10.
HDSentinel has not reported any errors for that disk, it just suddenly became corrupt.
I've never had anything like this happen for NTFS.
 
I am fortunate(!) that this was one of my music drives, which I maintain a full backup of.
Really concerns me about the rest of my data until I can migrate these drives back to NTFS.
And now make think I need to be spending $2000+ on ensuring that I have an offline mirror of all my data, not just "important" data. Turns out that everything becomes "important" when you actually lose it.

[jmone]

Yup - nothing beats backup!  For what it is worth I'm still going strong on ReFS on both Win10 and WS2012R2 Essentials.  0 probs so far (touch wood).

[RD James]

Yup - nothing beats backup!  For what it is worth I'm still going strong on ReFS on both Win10 and WS2012R2 Essentials.  0 probs so far (touch wood).

I've had a number of drives without any problems using ReFS until now for nearly three years now.
That you can just open Explorer and suddenly all your files are marked as corrupt by the OS is very concerning. That's a RAID-like failure where suddenly everything is marked as bad, not just a file or two before you pull the drive.

[RD James]

Well, it's not the drive I thought it was so I've lost a lot more than I expected.
Wasn't just one of the music drives that I had a 1:1 backup of.

I've tested and purchased ReclaiMe which has recovered* 1TB of files and counting.
However there's at least 550GB of files that I've lost, of the folders that I tried to cover.


*I've yet to actually test all of these files, since they're videos.
There are at least some images which were "recovered" but are corrupt.

[RD James]

Not sure whether I should have bumped this topic or made a new one.
The Windows 10 Creator's Update seems to have enabled ReFS v3.2 as an officially-sanctioned file system for formatting drives now - at least on Win 10 Pro; not sure about Home.
Previously, Windows 8.1 or earlier versions of Windows 10 required registry tweaks to do this, and would format drives as ReFS v1.2.
However it looks like it may be removed in the Fall Creator's Update, based on what they're doing with Insider Builds, since they are now introducing Windows 10 Pro for Workstations which lists ReFS support as one of its features.
 
But for now, there are a few important things:
If you are using stand-alone drives rather than Storage Spaces, they need to be reformatted if you want to upgrade to v3.2
Integrity Streams (checksums) are not enabled by default and this is true of any drive which was formatted without specifically enabling it.
You can check this in an elevated PowerShell window using

Code: [Select]

Get-FileIntegrity D:Where D: is your drive. This should report that it is both enabled and enforced.
 
Now you can apparently enable integrity streams on a drive with:

Code: [Select]

Set-FileIntegrity D:\ -Enable $TrueBut this did not work for any of my drives - perhaps because they were formatted with ReFS v1.2
You can check the version using

Code: [Select]

fsutil fsinfo refsinfo D:
To format a drive and enable integrity streams, use:

Code: [Select]

format D: /FS:ReFS /I:enable /QThis will format the drive with 4K clusters, which is what Microsoft recommends by default.
However people have reported significant memory usage and other issues with 4K clusters on large ReFS drives/pools, and 4K clusters use CRC32 checksums, while 64K clusters use CRC64 checksums. (I'm not sure if that matters)

To format a drive with 64K clusters and enable integrity streams, use:

Code: [Select]

format D: /FS:ReFS /A:64K /I:enable /Q
This worked fine for me initially, but once I had more than one 8TB drive using ReFS with integrity streams enabled, certain tasks such as DrivePool rebalancing would cause "metafile" memory usage to fill all of the available RAM. (30/32GB)
 
To address this, I had to use all three options from this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4016173/fix-heavy-memory-usage-in-refs-on-windows-server-2016-and-windows-10

Code: [Select]

RefsEnableLargeWorkingSetTrim = 1
RefsNumberOfChunksToTrim = 32
RefsEnableInlineTrim = 1

Now I don't know what is going to happen with the Fall Creator's Update or going forward, but I think part of the reason that many of us chose to use ReFS was due to the integrity stream feature.
But without Windows 8.1/10 supporting ReFS officially, I don't believe the tools required were present to actually confirm whether it was enabled or not.
Really, I think that all ReFS got us over NTFS was copy-on-write behavior. (at least I don't think NTFS uses it?)
 
But I'm not even sure if there's much benefit to Integrity Streams if you aren't using Storage Spaces.
Perhaps someone here is more knowledgeable on the subject.

[jmone]

I've converted all my ReFS drives to V3.2 (took a few weeks on a 50TB pool) and it is going fine for me.  I'm not seeing any mem leaks on my setup (but did with a prior HW Setup but I think it was the NIC Driver in that case).  Still very happy with ReFS and I've not had a single file issue since moving off NTFS.  It is a PITA that ReFS format support is gone from the latest Insider Previews so I have to (for now at least) format new drives on another PC before using it on this machine.

[RD James]

I've converted all my ReFS drives to V3.2 (took a few weeks on a 50TB pool) and it is going fine for me.  I'm not seeing any mem leaks on my setup (but did with a prior HW Setup but I think it was the NIC Driver in that case).  Still very happy with ReFS and I've not had a single file issue since moving off NTFS.  It is a PITA that ReFS format support is gone from the latest Insider Previews so I have to (for now at least) format new drives on another PC before using it on this machine.

I believe it's only an issue if you have Integrity Streams enabled. If you formatted the drives without the /I:enable command, it shouldn't happen.
Since I experienced this high memory usage issue even with 64K clusters, I'm not sure whether I should actually be using 4K or 64K clusters now.
 
I know that 4K clusters can be space-inefficient if you have a lot of small files (though what constitutes a "lot") but my understanding was that larger cluster sizes should perform better.
Microsoft suggests that large cluster sizes can lead to I/O amplification degrading performance but I keep finding articles or forum posts with people running into issues with ReFS and 4K clusters. (it's a newer feature)
 
I'm currently 2/3 of the way through upgrading a 48TB pool to ReFS v3.2 with 64K clusters and IS enabled now though...