Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

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middings
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Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by middings »

In the topic Intel processor design flaw requiring ROS kernel mode change, a participant made a comment that I believe deserves its own topic:
Ancient wrote:If focus isn't placed on open source file systems supported by Linux, ... ReactOS will limp along, but isn't likely to thrive. Support for more than NTFS read seems like a good thing, but Microsoft controls NTFS, and can change it at will.
Yes, "Microsoft controls NTFS" and perhaps could "change it at will" but would they? I think not. I am not worried about Microsoft introducing a change to the NTFS file system for the purpose of defeating use of NTFS with non-MIcrosoft operating systems. I have two main reasons for believing this.

(1) A breaking change to NTFS will affect hundreds of millions of systems running Microsoft operating systems that didn't get the update. Millions of external NTFS formatted hard drives will fail to be reliably interchangeable between computers running Microsoft operating systems. I think the technical headaches for Microsoft and loss of customer good will deters Microsoft from modifying NTFS in such a way.

(2) A breaking change to NTFS that adversely affects existing operating systems that interoperate with NTFS formatted storage devices may draw unpleasant attention from anti-trust regulators to Microsoft. This is not a regulatory and financial threat to Microsoft in the USA alone. The EU, South Korea, and now China (PRC) now enforce anti-trust rules. They could also levy serious fines and impose regulatory sanctions on Microsoft products sold in their countries.

I leave it to the judgment of the ReactOS developers (devs) which file systems to support. At least one dev is currently working to make the BTRFS file system operate with ReactOS. If I understand correctly, that dev intends to use BTRFS to test ReactOS's support of installable file systems. BTRFS is being used because there is no full-featured open source kernel level NTFS driver that operates with Microsoft Windows. In the past, there was an effort to make the EXT2 file system work with ReactOS. This remains incomplete and unusable. EXT2 was once ubiquitous in the Linux/BSD world.

USB boot is for another topic.
erkinalp
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by erkinalp »

NTFS is now feature-complete. No changes has been made since Windows 2000 era, NTFS version 3.
In the past, there was an effort to make the EXT2 file system work with ReactOS. This remains incomplete and unusable. EXT2 was once ubiquitous in the Linux/BSD world.
An ext2 driver can mount ext3 and ext4 but without new features. ext4 is still ubiquitious.
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dark
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by dark »

0 chance of that happening. You can't make changes to a file system just because you feel like it. Filesystems and drivers take years of testing, and you can't switch filesystems with the operating system on disk.

Also legally speaking, ReactOS has long had a plan to support installing to something like ext3 or 4 due to the need for filesystem security features, and to create an NTFS partition would require getting licensing from Microsoft (not using an existing one though). Just need to get the driver support for non FAT FSs working in first stage installer, and all of this becomes a non issue
Zombiedeth
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by Zombiedeth »

erkinalp wrote:NTFS is now feature-complete. No changes has been made since Windows 2000 era, NTFS version 3.
There have been numerous changes guess you have never tried running a chkdsk from older versions of windows to a newer windows os install.
middings
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by middings »

You make an interesting assertion, Zombiedeth. Perhaps chkdsk changed.
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Fraizeraust
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by Fraizeraust »

erkinalp wrote:NTFS is now feature-complete. No changes has been made since Windows 2000 era, NTFS version 3.
If I am not mistaken, no changes have been made since XP era (and not 2000) with the last version being v3.1.

@middings: If Microsoft decides to change the way NTFS operates that would definitely screw things up. I'm sure Microsoft developers aren't so dumb to do such a move, at the very least they can do some minor changes without interfering with the NTFS' inner core parts.
a.k.a. GeoB99 -- ReactOS Kernel developer -- My Wiki page
Zombiedeth
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by Zombiedeth »

middings wrote:You make an interesting assertion, Zombiedeth. Perhaps chkdsk changed.
For instance if you run chkdsk in windows 8 on a windows 10 drive you will get numerous errors primarily errors about reparse points.
And from windows xp to windows 7 you will get similar errors to a lesser extent so they are doing something different. So that leaves the question are they just exercising features that were already part of NTFS that older chkdsk does not understand or have they changed NTFS in newer versions of windows.
ROCKNROLLKID
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by ROCKNROLLKID »

Zombiedeth wrote:
middings wrote:You make an interesting assertion, Zombiedeth. Perhaps chkdsk changed.
For instance if you run chkdsk in windows 8 on a windows 10 drive you will get numerous errors primarily errors about reparse points.
And from windows xp to windows 7 you will get similar errors to a lesser extent so they are doing something different. So that leaves the question are they just exercising features that were already part of NTFS that older chkdsk does not understand or have they changed NTFS in newer versions of windows.
chkdsk is implemented in the kernel, not in NTFS. NTFS itself hasn't changed since XP was released. The "changes" you have been seeing related to NTFS have actually been kernel changes.

The only change we will see in filesystems is when MS officially releases ReFS and users start moving to that.
hbelusca
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by hbelusca »

ROCKNROLLKID wrote:chkdsk is implemented in the kernel, not in NTFS. NTFS itself hasn't changed since XP was released. The "changes" you have been seeing related to NTFS have actually been kernel changes.

The only change we will see in filesystems is when MS officially releases ReFS and users start moving to that.
There is the kernel, then there are the filesystem drivers (ntfs.sys for example) that are loaded and used when needed. Then there are user-mode filesystem helper libraries, eg. untfs.dll (and for FAT12/16/32: ufat.dll) that are used by user-mode components such as... chkdsk.exe and autochk.exe !
erkinalp
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Re: Must ReactOS fear a Microsoft change to NTFS?

Post by erkinalp »

dark wrote:0 chance of that happening. You can't make changes to a file system just because you feel like it. Filesystems and drivers take years of testing, and you can't switch filesystems with the operating system on disk.
Linux extended filesystem is designed for that kind of gradual conversion from the outset, which has been gradually extended from Minix FS. Conversion procedure implies ext3=ext2+journal and ext4 has different data structures: http://fibrevillage.com/storage/334-con ... -ext3-ext4
You would just ignore the journal pointers and journal actions to mount ext3 as ext2.
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