Forum Discussion
SUGGESTION: change the UX when trying to access a volume with a newer ReFS version than supported
If you are trying to access to disk which is formatted with 3.9 (WS vNext + W11 22H2 RP / beta / insider) and you attach it to an earlier version of Windows Server (or client OS), File Explorer will ...
Better suggestion:
Push updates out to older versions of Windows so that never version numbers of ReFS can be recognized. The message could say something like "This volume is formatted with ReFS version 3.9, however this version of Windows only supports up to version 3.2 of ReFS. Please see <some URL> for a full list of Windows versions with the corresponding supported ReFS versions."
Another suggestion:
When mounting ReFS on newer versions of Windows, don't silently, automatically upgrade the volume to the newer ReFS version.
Push updates out to older versions of Windows so that never version numbers of ReFS can be recognized. The message could say something like "This volume is formatted with ReFS version 3.9, however this version of Windows only supports up to version 3.2 of ReFS. Please see <some URL> for a full list of Windows versions with the corresponding supported ReFS versions."
Another suggestion:
When mounting ReFS on newer versions of Windows, don't silently, automatically upgrade the volume to the newer ReFS version.
Not completely true, the ReFS version is written to the volume so you can easily obtain this (in fact if you check the event logs they *might* indicate it can't mount the volume due to version issues). Further, the structures of the file system are also written to the volume (this is partially how ReFS works with regard to backward compatability). I'm not across the specifics but I do know it exists based on reverse engineering papers I've read.
In short, yes it should be trivial for Microsoft to indicate that the volume can't be mounted because the version is too new (and provide the version number at a minimum).
In short, yes it should be trivial for Microsoft to indicate that the volume can't be mounted because the version is too new (and provide the version number at a minimum).