NTFS is about to grow old, Microsoft has quietly enabled ReFS support for Win11

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen OC_Formula for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com January 23, as early as 2011-2012, when Microsoft launched Windows 8, it launched a new file system called flexible File system (ReFS).

Compared to NTFS (New Technology File System, the new technology file system, debuted with the NT system in 1993), ReFS claims to bring more resilience, higher performance, and higher data size support on the virtual machine (vm) (35PB NT is NTFS), among other advantages.

But in fact, so far, Microsoft has only supported Windows Server. However, Microsoft provided ReFS support for Windows 10 Enterprise sku in 2017 (although it also supports formatting to ReFS format).

However, even in 2023, Microsoft still does not provide ReFS support for client systems, but that may soon change, including the file system as the boot partition of the installation system, which is no longer as troublesome as before.

Windows enthusiast @ Xeno found that Microsoft seems to have started to enable ReFS on Windows 11. Although this feature is still disabled on the latest Win11 Dev 25281, it can be enabled in ViviTool using a special ID "42189933". Interested CTOnews.com partners can give it a try.

For comparison, if you try to install Windows 11 Build 25281 to ReFS partition without ID "42189933" enabled, the installation will be interrupted with an error: Windows cannot be installed into this hard disk space. The file system on the current partition [ReFS] does not support Windows installation.

"Win10 Professional fall Creator Update will remove ReFS format"