Windows Refs file system -- mega improvement PLEASE BRING IT BACK Ms

jimbo45 · 10 May 2018

Hi there

restored an old W8.1 system so I could create a 3 HDD storage space thing to REFS.

Then restored W10 pro system. It still had the HDD's as REFS -- I had to do it that way as W10 has removed REFS file creation although read/write still supported.

Even over a 5GB wifi network was getting around 140 MB/s (not 140 Mb/s) copying files from Linux NAS to the Windows system. With NTFS getting around 75 MB/s so about half speed.

Local copying -- up to around 600 - 800 MB/s

So Ms what's up -- why did you kill REFS file creation facility on W10 Pro even though READ / WRITE on existing REFS HDD's is supported -- or are you hobbling W10 Pro to get people to go Enterprise or W10 Workstation.

Anybody from Ms here -- any answers.

Cheers
jimbo

slicendice · 10 May 2018

I've never actually tested ReFS, nor compared it's performance. I have found a benchmark that has completely different numbers compared to your results: Storage Performance : ReFS vs NTFS

It is very interesting that you get such different results. I get max I/O performance for my hardware using NTFS. There's nothing that could be improved. Neither do I have proper WiFi or LAN devices to match even close to what my disk IO is capable of. :)

jimbo45 · 11 May 2018

Hi there

I'm using Striped i.e fast but no redundancy 3 vol storage space (approx. equiv to RAID 0) which is where the speed works. Also using real not Virtual disks.

That test you linked to was carried out over 2 years ago -- Refs has been updated since then.

Copying 2.0 TB from internal NTFS HDD partition ("D") to storage space REFS I'm still getting very decent I/O speed for spinners and 5400 RPM spinners at that.

From Storage space to storage space with SSD's -- very much faster approx. 600 MB/s

Windows itself is also running from the same vol as "D" partition -- no SSD's here on this machine (unfortunately) -- just testing some older SATA spinners I had lying around to see if machine would be a good archival storage machine.

Here's the lowest transfer I'm getting. (Partition NTFS to storage space REFS) large copy 2.0 TB - files roughly 4 - 7 GB each --dvd iso images.

Windows Refs file system -- mega improvement PLEASE BRING IT BACK Ms-refs.png

Over wifi I'm consistently getting around 120 MB/s - that's from a Linux NAS server (xfs file system) - in this case the transfer doesn't vary much whether it's NTFS or Refs.

Note though for my Wifi I plug an ethernet Lan cable from the machine into a 4 port switch and then run another small ethernet cable to a 4 port Night Hawk Wifi extender.

This probably works far better than relying on cheapish internal Wifi cards -- trying with a laptop using it's wifi card speed maxes out at around 80 MB/s - plug the laptop into the switch via LAN and then I'm back up to around 120 MB/s so looks like switch / extender combo are better than plain wifi card.

The advantage of Refs is that you can get round the file name length problem (max 266 chars for directories + file name).

Whether it's more "Breakable" than NTFS I don't know - my experience is these days HDD's are resilient enough and if you have backup you might as well go for a "RAID 0" type scenario if you aren't running an enterprise.

Cheers
jimbo