Yesterday I formatted 4 drives with b9600 recovery, so yes, it works, and windows mounts and handle all partitions =) Looks like I was right about that =D
Yep, you were right... If WinRE v6-3-9600-16384 is able to format all drives to ReFS (I noticed, that it has refs.sys and urefs.dll), it means, there is some setting in registry, which overrides drive-RAID1-check. I will start comparing tomorrow... Of course I can't format drives under recovery prompt, when they have TrueCrypt layer.
I still don't get it: What exactly are the disadvantages of this more reliable file system, which is not slower than NTFS for a data partition on a Desktop? Some people here are saying, it makes only sense for big raid arrays, but they don't tell why. I have lost data and had corrupted files on NTFS-partitions several times over the years due to file system errors. (I always had backups, but it was still annoying.) If ReFS can lower the probability of such incidents, why not use it?
Good news: Windows 2012 R2 b9600 is able to format ReFS without the question, so it is only a matter of time, when we will find the difference in settings between the both twins:
Not yet, I only managed to track the registry, where I found this new section (mentioning ReFS) listed below (however, it isn't useful, because it is same in W8-1 and W2012 R2). Tomorrow I plan to look at system license of W2012 R2 and W8-1 with your "LicenseDemo.exe" and compare. However I have no idea, where exactly to look at. If the difference will be there, we could use xrm-ms from 2012 R2 Server (or WinRE) to replace the setting. Code: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem] "SymlinkLocalToRemoteEvaluation"=dword:00000001 "SymlinkLocalToLocalEvaluation"=dword:00000001 "NtfsDisableCompression"=dword:00000000 "DisableDeleteNotification"=dword:00000000 "FilterSupportedFeaturesMode"=dword:00000000 "NtfsDisableEncryption"=dword:00000000 "SymlinkRemoteToRemoteEvaluation"=dword:00000000 "NtfsAllowExtendedCharacter8dot3Rename"=dword:00000000 "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000002 "NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001 "SymlinkRemoteToLocalEvaluation"=dword:00000000 "NtfsQuotaNotifyRate"=dword:00000e10 "NtfsMftZoneReservation"=dword:00000000 "NtfsDisableLfsDowngrade"=dword:00000000 "Win31FileSystem"=dword:00000000 "Win95TruncatedExtensions"=dword:00000001 "NtfsEncryptPagingFile"=dword:00000000 "NtfsDisableVolsnapHints"=dword:00000000 "NtfsMemoryUsage"=dword:00000000 "NtfsBugcheckOnCorrupt"=dword:00000000 "ScrubMode"=dword:00000001 "UdfsSoftwareDefectManagement"=dword:00000000 "UdfsCloseSessionOnEject"=dword:00000003 "RefsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001 Also there is 2nd hidden setting, what I want to bring to life for diskmgmt.msc... ...so Windows Disk Management Console (MSC) could format ReFS directly...
Hm... i found nothing that relates me to think that it is sku related. and replacing of XRM files doesn't work as they are signed and have different license guids.
Exactly. Notice that adoption of btrfs (which has far more documentation AND is older) on the Linux distribution side is more miss than hit; like ReFS, btrfs is restricted, merely in terms of read support. NTFS, on the other hand, can be read by any other desktop OR server OS (this is something I leverage on a daily basis, as my NTFS partition is FAR larger than my OS X partitions put together; because of that disparity, and being unable to write to NTFS partitions without third-party tools , I can comfortably download OS X-related torrents to my NTFS partition - from Windows, of course - and be safe that OS X can't muck them up). If I also ran bare-metal Linux (or BSD) the same safety net would apply, as both can read NTFS, but neither can write without third-party tools. Even Android can read NTFS partitions - no, Microsoft has no issue with that. If you put all the desktop and server filesystems of IT Planet entire on the same LAN, the closest on that LAN to being universally readable would be, surprisingly, NTFS - including when compared to exFAT, FAT, and FAT32. However, despite that, NTFS is regarded by Apple, Google, et. alia., like Irma Pince (the Hogwarts librarian) is regarded by Raveclaws - and Hermione Granger - an evil.
Maybe file for replacement could be taken from b9600 Client WinRE? Problem is that the setting can be named stupidly... IMHO "volmgrx-" group is suitable for that setting...
I have checked the SHA-1 for format.com from boot.wim (b9600) and it's the same. Code: 476CFD4680012C55A9F72A5E598B6366C564D6C7
Those "additional" features of NTFS are quite obsolete and unimportant for standard use. There are some really old deprecated things between them like 8+3 shortnames etc... It makes ReFS quicker without them. @All: I'll start big comparison of W2012R2 and W8-1 x64 to find out, how to bypass message "ReFS file system is not supported on this device." in W8-1. Any help is welcome.
If you open the file "format.com" of Windows 8.0 version in an editor, you can find "QueryDataRedundancyCount" also. So i think, this is not the real point.
Yep, but in W8-0 it is used only to choose /i:enable or /i: disable, when no /i parameter is specified, so optional integrity stream for auto-correct is used, when there is 2nd copy of data. In W8-1, it appears it is more complicated and also used to deny the formatting...
Strange, i monitored format.com in action with sysinternals procmon tool. All involved system files have the same hashes like in Server 2012 R2 and i saw no suspicious registry accesses meanwhile...