Microsoft removes ReFS file system create option from Windows 10 Pro

Microsoft will remove support for creating ReFS (Resilient File System) storage devices for all versions of Windows 10 except for Windows 10 Enterprise and the upcoming Windows 10 Pro for Workstations in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

The company published a list of features that will be deprecated or removed in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in July.

This list was updated by Microsoft on August 17, 2017 to reflect the decision to pull ReFS create support from most Windows 10 editions.

Creation ability will be available in the following editions only: Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Pro for Workstations.

Creation ability will be removed from all other editions. All other editions will have Read and Write ability.

What this means is that administrators cannot select the ReFS file system anymore when they format drives or change file systems of drives.

Microsoft introduced the Resilient File System in Windows Server 2012, and added support for the file system in Windows Server 2016 and all editions of Windows 8.1 and 10.

Setup is not as easy as selecting ReFS as a the file system though, as you need to create virtual disks, initialize them together, and use Storage Spaces to create a storage pool to select ReFS as the file system for the storage pool.

ReFS offers several advantages over NTFS such as integrity checks, protection against data degradation, handling of long paths, storage virtualization, and built-in hard drive redundancy and disk failure protection.

While all editions of Windows 10 keep support for interacting with existing ReFS storage solutions, the option to create ReFS storage is limited to Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Pro for Workstation when the Fall Creators Update gets released.

Microsoft revealed the upcoming Windows 10 Pro for Workstations edition in 2017 and plans to make it available at the same time it releases the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations has only a handful of differentiating factors when compared to Windows 10 Pro. In fact, most of the differences Microsoft listed during the announcement were part of Windows 10 Pro as well.

This changes with the planned update and the removal of the ReFS create ability on Windows 10 Pro.

Did Microsoft do that to entice companies to pick the -- probably more expensive -- Windows 10 Pro for Workstations edition?

Closing Words

It looks as if Windows 10 Pro is slowly turned into a Windows 10 Semi-Pro edition that sits between Windows 10 Home and the editions of Windows 10 designed for business and enterprise use.