Windows 11: Existing ReFS volumes inaccessible for Windows 10 after booting Windows 11

Copper Contributor

I usually run Windows 10 Pro for Workstations on my desktop. Existing disks/volumes include a simple storage space consisting of 2 SATA SSDs ("Raid0") with one volume spanning the whole pool, which was formatted with ReFS. 

 

For testing purposes I installed the current Windows 11 Preview (21H2 Build 22000.160) under Windows 10 from ISO (Windows11_InsiderPreview_Client_x64_de-de_22000.iso) as follows: prepared an external SATA SSD in an USB3-enclosure by installing the Win11 Preview (flavor: Windows 11 Pro for Workstations) via dism in a VHDX file and manually creating a bootloader on the USB-SSD to boot from the virtual disk (VHDX).

 

The system booted fine from USB and I was guided through the normal setup procedure of windows 11 until I got to the normal destkop. All internal disks showed up normally in Windows 11, including the storage space volume as well as various further NTFS formatted drives/volumes.

 

HOWEVER: when I booted my original windows 10 again, the ReFS partition showed up as "RAW" and Windows 10 always asked me to format the volume. Rebooted several times, no change, all files and folders remain "lost" for Windows 10. When booting up Windows 11 again everything is still there and, for example, could be copied to different locations. So data is actually still there (hopefully, still have to run some tests).

 

It seems that the preview of Windows 11 Pro for Workstations "automatically modified" the Storage Space and/or ReFS volume in some way, which renders it incompatible with Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. There was no dialogue asking for permission nor could I find any information on this behaviour.

 

I can only hope this is a bug - such behaviour is in my view simply not acceptable for any software, in particular software wanting to be considered as a "professional" and even more so for a filesystem that claims to be "secure" and "reliable". 

 

5 Replies

Just adding myself to this. I have the latest updated versions of windows 11 and windows 10, both enterprise edition, refs is raw in windows 10 after a reboot into windows 11.

Hi, unfortunately exact same thing happened to me :
1. REFS created under win 10 workstation
2. Install win 11
3.Reinstall to WIN 10
4. Data lost, appears as RAW

Not so resilient in my opinion.

@Besterino 

 

I have installed windows 11 and formated two of my 4 partitions in ReFS, then I had to install windows 10 on the same device, none of the windows 10 versions (Enterprise nor Pro) shows these 2 ReFS drives and kept saying you have to format them (Disk Management show RAW tag on them), i had to reinstall with windows 11 and it's accessible now

 

did you find any solution?

 

Hi, ReFs has versions and windows silently updates them. So older builds of windows don't support later ReFs, also I only tested Refs with "Win 10 for workstations" edition.  Check compatibility here

 

  https://gist.github.com/0xbadfca11/da0598e47dd643d933dc#mountability

 

 

 @rozaboy