I have heard that Windows has released NTFS, ReFS, FAT32, exFAT, and concerned fils systems, but days ago I found a little-known fils system called WinFS which seems fewer people use. Does anyone know this file system and enlighten me about it? I’m just curious about it, thanks in advance!
WinFS (short for Windows Future Storage) was the code name for a discontinued data storage and management system project based on relational databases that Microsoft created and first presented in 2003. It was created as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, capable of storing and managing organized, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
WinFS includes a relational database for the storage of information and allows any type of information to be stored in it, provided there is a well-defined schema for the type. Individual data items could then be related together by relationships, which are either inferred by the system based on certain attributes or explicitly stated by the user. As the data has a well-defined schema, any application can reuse the data; and using the relationships, related data can be effectively organized as well as retrieved. Because the system knows the structure and intent of the information, it can be used to make complex queries that enable advanced searching through the data and aggregating various data items by exploiting the relationships between them.
While WinFS and its shared type schema make it possible for an application to recognize the different data types, the application still has to be coded to render the different data types. Consequently, it would not allow the development of a single application that can view or edit all data types; rather, what WinFS enables applications to do is understand the structure of all data and extract the information that they can use further. When WinFS was introduced at the 2003 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft also released a video presentation, named IWish, showing mockup interfaces that showed how applications would expose interfaces that take advantage of a unified type system. The concepts shown in the video ranged from applications using the relationships of items to dynamically offering filtering options to applications grouping multiple related data types and rendering them in a unified presentation.
WinFS was billed as one of the pillars of the “Longhorn” wave of technologies and would ship as part of the next version of Windows. It was subsequently decided that WinFS would ship after the release of Windows Vista, but those plans were shelved in June 2006, with some of its component technologies being integrated into ADO.NET and Microsoft SQL Server.
Then how to download WinFS? Is there any download source suggested?
You can download WinFS here which releases the WinFS in the form of an MSI installer that includes a signed driver and all files necessary to run and develop user-mode file systems on Windows. The installer supports Windows native, FUSE, .NET, and Cygwin file systems out of the box.
You can:
Download and run the WinFsp installer.
In the installer select the option to install the developer files. These include the MEMFS sample file system, but also header and library files that let you develop your own user-mode file system.
You should not need to reboot unless WinFsp is already running on your system.
Additionally, you can launch WinFsp from the Windows Explorer:
Open Windows Explorer
Select “This PC”. Right-click and select “Map network drive…”
Map a drive to \memfs64\share. (Assuming a 64-bit machine. Try \memfs32\share if you have a 32-bit machine.)
After a few seconds a new Explorer window will open up for your new drive.
The file system behind this drive is a case-insensitive in-memory file system (MEMFS).
When you are done, you can simply right-click on the drive from Windows Explorer and select “Disconnect”.
And you can launch WinFsp from the Command Prompt:
Start a non-admin Command Prompt.
Navigate to the folder where you installed WinFsp: cd C:\Program Files (x86)\WinFsp\bin
Execute the command: memfs-x64 -u \memfs64\share2 -m *. (Assuming a 64-bit machine. Try memfs-x86 -u \memfs32\share2 -m * if you have a 32-bit machine.)
Open a second non-admin Command Prompt and navigate to the new drive.
When you are done, you can just press Ctrl-C to kill the MEMFS process from the first command prompt.