Today’s tip…
Windows Server 2012 comes with a new file system, ReFS (Resilient File System). This file system is not meant to be a replacement for NTFS. It is merely meant to handle a small subset of what NTFS does. There are a number of things in
NTFS that are not part of ReFS. Here is a reference guide that you can keep handy to help you quickly field questions.
| Functionality | NTFS | ReFS |
| Named Streams | Yes | No |
| OBJECT IDs | Yes | No |
| File System Compression | Yes | No |
| File System Encryption | Yes | No |
| TRANSACTIONS | Yes | No |
| Sparse Files | Yes | Yes/No* |
| Hard Links | Yes | No |
| Extended Attributes | Yes | No |
| Quota | Yes | No |
| Boot to file system | Yes | No |
| Supported on removable media | Yes | No |
| Failover Cluster support | Yes | Yes |
| Deduplication | Yes | No |
| BitLocker encryption | Yes | Yes |
| Access-control lists | Yes | Yes |
| USN journal | Yes | Yes |
| Change notifications | Yes | Yes |
| Junction points | Yes | Yes |
| Mount points | Yes | Yes |
| Reparse points | Yes | Yes |
| Volume snapshots | Yes | Yes |
| File IDs | Yes | Yes |
| Oplocks | Yes | Yes |
| VSS snapshot support | Yes | Yes |
| Availability | Server/Client | Server only |
| Usable with WDS | Yes | No |
*Data streams can be sparse but integrity streams cannot.