We are happy to announce the present result of this work and release a Paragon UFSD driver that supports working with Refs volumes in read-only mode (full solution with both read and write support is under active development).

Paragon Software’s development team has been working on integrating ReFS file system support into our UFSD (Universal File System Driver) technology since 2012. Unfortunately even with the upper-layer engine nearly identical to what’s found in NTFS, up until now, only Microsoft platforms provided access to ReFS volumes as a result, a Windows PC or a virtual machine running a supported Windows operating system would still be required to open files on Refs volumes from other platforms such as Linux, Mac, etc. This reuse ensures a high degree of compatibility with the features of NTFS that we’re carrying forward”.

To provide better NTFS file system compatibility for existing applications, Microsoft is using the same API for implementing file system semantics: “This code implements the file system interface (read, write, open, close, change notification, etc.), maintains in-memory file and volume state, enforces security, and maintains memory caching and synchronization for file data.

ReFS was designed with one key goal in mind – file system integrity and the ability to verify and auto-correct data without need to run a separate file system checking utility. Since then support of this file system has been integrated into Microsoft server and desktop operating systems like Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, Server 2016 (Technical Preview). Resilient File System (ReFS) was first introduced by Microsoft Corporation in the release of Microsoft Server 2012.

Paragon driver for windows