Comment by protimewaster
2 days ago
That's my point, though, is that it seems weird to spend a half billion dollars just to solve the problem for an extremely common use case by saying "use OpenZFS".
Why not come up with a solution that covers external storage too, instead of spending all that money and relying on external solutions? I just don't understand why they couldn't have optional checksums in APFS.
It's far more weird that NTFS still makes zero effort to maintain file integrity on any level, on internal or external disks.
ReFS exists, so Microsoft knew they needed to do something, but they have utterly failed to protect the vast majority of users.
To be fair, though, NTFS predates APFS by over 20 years.
Don't get me wrong, there's no reason Microsoft can't transition to another filesystem (like offering ReFS outside of Server or whatever Windows variants support it currently), but I don't understand why a company would transition to a new filesystem in 2016 and not include a data checksums option. Hell, ReFS predates APFS, and I think it even has optional data checksums.
To be fair, NTFS is still the default Windows 11 filesystem in 2025, and Microsoft still makes zero effort to insure file integrity when you use that default Windows filesystem.
Handling file integrity in hardware is a big step up.
1 reply →
ReFS is available on Windows 10/11 client; it's what the DevDrive feature uses. And the current Insider allows installation of the OS/boot volume on ReFS.
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/testing-instaling-windows-...