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Lost access to ReFS formatted Storage Pool after moving to another Windows 11 Pro install

Anonymous
2025-01-05T16:33:24+00:00

Hello,

I had a Windows 11 Pro computer, and on that compute years ago, I set up a Storage Spaces pool (2 mirrored drives) and formatted the filesystem as ReFS. Seems easy enough. It worked great for many years. Originally I set it up in Windows 10 Pro, then updated to Windows 11 Pro, then upgraded the pool...no issues.

Then, I got a new motherboard/CPU/memory upgrade, installed Windows 11 Pro, activated it, and then plugged in my 2 pool drives, same order and same SATA locations. Storage Spaces found them and re-set-up the pool easily. Hooray.

However, when I click on the drive, it says:

"This version of Windows doesn't support the ReFS format on drive D"

I then say "OK, let me try and re-format the drive to ReFS just to see." Turns out ReFS is no longer a filesystem option: I only see NTFS.

This can't possibly be right...did Windows remove ReFS support from the Pro version??? I know that the FS is fine because if I run diskpart and then do "list volume" I get:


DISKPART> list volume 

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info 

  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  -------- 

  Volume 0     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media 

  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition   1862 GB  Healthy    Boot 

  Volume 2                      FAT32  Partition    100 MB  Healthy    Hidden 

  Volume 3                      NTFS   Partition    644 MB  Healthy    Hidden 

  Volume 4     D                ReFS   Partition   6143 GB  Healthy 

DISKPART>

so you can see that the ReFS partition is sitting there happy and healthy. Except Windows apparently doesn't have the driver to read it.

Again, I literally installed the same version of Windows that I had 2 days ago (Windows 11 Pro) that was happily reading my pool.

How do I get ReFS set up with Windows 11 Pro? I'm confident (!!!) that it is possible, because I was literally just using it 2 days ago.

Thank you!

***moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Files, folders, and storage***

Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | Devices and deployment | Set up, install, or upgrade

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-01-05T19:15:01+00:00

    So doing some research, it's possible that ReFS only works in Windows 11 Pro for Workstations. I'm pretty sure that I must have had that version previously. But right now, I've only installed the base version of Pro. I don't think that Microsoft Account shows the available licenses tied to my username (previously it did not), I just activated Pro on my new computer and deactivated my old one.

    How do I upgrade to Workstation edition (again, I'm pretty sure I already own it...)

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