Windows on Btrfs

#1

Post by susam » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

Windows on Btrfs
lilysthings.org

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#2

Post by biorach » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

I highly recommend the Windows BTRFS driver.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#3

Post by speed_spread » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

Too bad the article doesn't talk about performance vs NTFS. Any quick and dirty comparative benchmark would have been nice. But then again, If BTRFS had been slower than NTFS it could have been due to a suboptimal (re)implementation.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#4

Post by dmitrygr » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

Nobody asked for this, wanted this, or imagined it. But it was done and it is epic! A tip of my hat!

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#5

Post by kitsunesoba » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

Interesting, I would've expected more Windows software to just assume NTFS with some fallbacks for (ex)fat given how there haven't really been any other options for quite some time.

How stable is Btrfs these days? Remember reading years ago that it was bad about spontaneously corrupting itself for no apparent reason.

Curious if something similar is possible with ZFS.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#6

Post by skanga » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

Can someone please explain the advantages of doing this?

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#7

Post by dgunay » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

skanga wrote: post #6

Can someone please explain the advantages of doing this?

During my transition period from Windows to Linux, I stored the majority of my games on my NTFS drive because it was much bigger and I wanted them available on Windows in case they didn't work on Proton. I could play them from Linux with ntfs-3g but some of them would just refuse to launch unless I moved them a non-NTFS drive. Maybe they would've worked in this scenario? Hard to say.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#8

Post by AshamedCaptain » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

I am sure this will break the second time you run Windows Update.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#9

Post by curt15 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #5

Interesting, I would've expected more Windows software to just assume NTFS with some fallbacks for (ex)fat given how there haven't really been any other options for quite some time. How stable is Btrfs these days? Remember reading years ago that it was bad about spontaneously corrupting itself for no apparent reason. Curious if something similar is possible with ZFS.

>How stable is Btrfs these days? Remember reading years ago that it was bad about spontaneously corrupting itself for no apparent reason.

On one hand, Fedora and SUSE default to Btrfs. On the other hand, data corruption bugs are still being unearthed [1]:

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2169947.

Re: Windows on Btrfs

#10

Post by csdvrx » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #8

I am sure this will break the second time you run Windows Update.

> I am sure this will break the second time you run Windows Update.

Then you are confidently wrong, because Windows Update rarely (if ever) touches the bootloader, while this is the main innovation of the WinBTRFS project.