Despite of ongoing success of Windows 7 OS, Microsoft is gearing up to launch its beta version of Windows 8 OS by February 2012. Today, it has revealed the particulars of its advanced file system – ReFS (known as Resilient File System) – which will be loaded in Windows 8 OS. ReFS is mainly created to convene the present and future needs for Windows storage. It has the ability to handle large volumes of data, resiliency to corruption and communal storage puddles across the machines.
Interestingly, ReFS will be available only inside Windows Server 8 which is the updated version of Windows server 2008 R2; so majority of the Windows 8 users will not be benefited from its improvements. However, Microsoft has planed to test it thoroughly before making it available for Windows 8 users.
Although, few months back ReFS features had been leaked out in internet market which points that it is the storage stack like other existing file system. It is built on the foundation of NTFS – New Technology File System – and is known as the successor of NTFS in Windows 8 server.
The New File System has several advantages which make it superior than other existing file systems. It includes the ability to detect all forms of disk corruption, data spring support for performance, and copy-on-write which is a write model in Windows8. Although, Copy-On-Write concept and Volume Shadow copy was already used by Microsoft in it SQL server products which enables quick snapshots of large data sheets.
ReFS has also certain drawbacks like it cannot be used on removal media, cannot be used to reboot an operating system. Currently, it’s simply designed for storage of data.
Microsoft has said that the new file system will be introduced as a part of Windows Server 8. It will be introduced to Windows 8 only when it will be ready to support the end user OS machine seamlessly in coming years.
Personally, I feel that the introduction of ReFS will bring the revolution in the field of storage as it supports memory up to petabytes. Also, in coming year users of Windows 8 will definitely get benefited as Microsoft is trying its level best to introduce ReFS in windows 8 client version. But, the point strikes in my mind here is that despite of ongoing dream run of Windows 7 OS why Microsoft is excited to launch Windows 8 OS. Near about 500 million licenses of Windows 7 version have already been sold out in market and present scenario states that still majority of Windows users are hanging with XP.
