Microsoft's ReFS File-System: Competitor To Btrfs?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Microsoft's ReFS File-System: Competitor To Btrfs?

Microsoft has released extensive details on their next-generation ReFS file-system to be introduced with Windows Server 8. How though does the file-system compare to Btrfs and the Linux file-systems?..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA0NDA

[johnc]

I feel "meh" about filesystem advancements in linux. Seems like things are just getting stagnant and btrfs is pretty much going nowhere.

I'd love to use linux for my NAS build but I'm probably going to end up with Solaris or one of its derivatives.

[kobblestown]

I think I'll just bite the bullet and move to Btrfs after Ubuntu 12.04 is out. Btrfs holds a great promise, I only wish it's maturing faster.

[garytr24]

I think I'll just bite the bullet and move to Btrfs after Ubuntu 12.04 is out. Btrfs holds a great promise, I only wish it's maturing faster.

does it have an error-correcting fsck yet? This has been a show-stopper for me. I don't see why they haven't fixed this yet.

[Nedanfor]

I think I'll just bite the bullet and move to Btrfs after Ubuntu 12.04 is out. Btrfs holds a great promise, I only wish it's maturing faster.

Remember that Btrfs is suitable only for testing purpose: while some people doesn't have trouble at all, you could experience data loss and other problems.

[smitty3268]

does it have an error-correcting fsck yet? This has been a show-stopper for me. I don't see why they haven't fixed this yet.

Honestly I think they're not doing that precisely to keep people like you from trying it out. I think they want to keep away all but the most hard-core users until they feel it's closer to being ready.

[garytr24]

Honestly I think they're not doing that precisely to keep people like you from trying it out. I think they want to keep away all but the most hard-core users until they feel it's closer to being ready.

Not sure what you mean... an FS for only kernel hackers? On the "user" rankings I'd say I'm pretty hard-core. In fact I ran BTRFS for about a year until my hard drive started getting bad sectors, i copied it over byte-by-byte to a new one, and the FS could no longer work properly, back to ext4.

Still, even if that were the case, not sure why they'd have an interest in preventing people from using it. Maybe they don't want bug reports that will affect the direction of the design? I thought they were much further along than that.

[Veerappan]

Not sure what you mean... an FS for only kernel hackers? On the "user" rankings I'd say I'm pretty hard-core. In fact I ran BTRFS for about a year until my hard drive started getting bad sectors, i copied it over byte-by-byte to a new one, and the FS could no longer work properly, back to ext4.

Still, even if that were the case, not sure why they'd have an interest in preventing people from using it. Maybe they don't want bug reports that will affect the direction of the design? I thought they were much further along than that.

Last time I checked btrfs didn't have a stable disk format... not sure if that's still the case. If it is, they're probably trying to prevent mass-adoption so that they have the ability to change things where needed. If they had a fsck utility and people started using btrfs all over the place, they'd have backwards compatibility issues to take into consideration when changing the underlying FS. With a smaller user-base, they can make more changes without messing as many people up.

[TheBlackCat]

Last time I checked btrfs didn't have a stable disk format... not sure if that's still the case. If it is, they're probably trying to prevent mass-adoption so that they have the ability to change things where needed. If they had a fsck utility and people started using btrfs all over the place, they'd have backwards compatibility issues to take into consideration when changing the underlying FS. With a smaller user-base, they can make more changes without messing as many people up.

Or, since only one person is working on the fsck program, it is taking longer than expected, or something else is taking his time.

[garytr24]

Last time I checked btrfs didn't have a stable disk format... not sure if that's still the case. If it is, they're probably trying to prevent mass-adoption so that they have the ability to change things where needed. If they had a fsck utility and people started using btrfs all over the place, they'd have backwards compatibility issues to take into consideration when changing the underlying FS. With a smaller user-base, they can make more changes without messing as many people up.

I'm not buying it, it would take quite a while for MASS-adoption since you'd need distro buy-in. The users that are willing to bend over backwards now to use BTRFS would prefer to migrate to a new version of the FS later than risk data-loss now.