Forum Discussion
ReFS volume inaccessible after update from Windows 10 22H2 to Windows 11 23H2
Since opening this thread in December, I'd like to share two "solutions" (workarounds):
1) As mentioned before, I attached the ReFS 3.4 volume which wouldn't read on Windows 11, to a Windows Server 2022 system, which auto-updated it to ReFS 3.7. Moving the disks back to the Windows 11 system, I can confirm that they now work fine. Storage Spaces on Windows 11 prompted to upgrade the pool, but the data was readable both before and after this upgrade. The ReFS version remained unchanged at 3.7. This solution does not require purchasing new disks, but it does require access to a Windows Server 2022 system.
2) The other method is to get new disks and copy the data, using an OS version like Windows 10, which can read the ReFS 3.4 volume which became unreadable after the upgrade to Windows 11.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-for-it-pro/refs-volume-appears-raw-version-doesn-t-match-expected-value/m-p/3058652
In that case, ReFS 1.x was silently deprecated by a Windows Update, and the error type was immediately helpful about the version issue ("Version 1.2 doesn't match expected value 3.4"). Here however we are dealing with ReFS 3.4 or higher, and the error is "The file system encountered a metadata file with inconsistent data". Sure, it's again an issue that came up with a Windows update/upgrade, which shouldn't have happened in the first place. I do see a pattern, and while we can accept things being deprecated for the sake of progress, the lack of warnings before this happens and then waiting a week or more for an answer are not good.
Can somebody Deleted perhaps escalate this?
No this is an entirely different thing and more like by design. The one I talk about does affect Windows Server vNext and ReFS 3.10