Back in 2011-12, when Microsoft launched Windows 8, the company also introduced a new file system called Resilient File System or ReFS. Compared with New Technology File System (NTFS), ReFS has the advantages of greater resiliency, higher performance (such as on virtual machines (VMs)), and higher storage capacity support (up to 35PB compared to 256TB for NTFS).
However, so far, next-generation file systems have been limited to Windows Server. In fact, if you remember, back in 2017, Microsoft, ReFS support was limited to the Pro and Enterprise Windows 10 SKUs. Fast forward to 2023, though, and support for ReFS on client operating system systems has improved.
Almost exactly a year ago, Windows enthusiasts began to notice that Microsoft was working on enabling bootable Windows on ReFS volumes. Although the feature was hidden in Canary channel builds at the time, users could force enable it through tools like ViVeTool and then install Windows 11 on a ReFS-formatted drive.
As time went on, we made some progress. In March this year, the company upgraded ReFS version 3.9 to the new version 3.10. So far, it can only be used to clean install Windows 11, but that changes with the launch of another Canary version. Before that, attempts to upgrade in place would fail.
That was back in August, and there hasn't been anything noteworthy about Windows boot support on ReFS since. At the same time, Microsoft has not upgraded the officially supported version of ReFS from 3.10 to 3.10, so trying to run Windows on any newer ReFS version on the latest Canarybuild 26040 will crash immediately. Apparently this crash is more severe than in previous versions and there won't be any ancillary information about recovery.
The above situation was discovered while testing ReFS version 3.12, which shows that the compatibility of the ReFS file system still needs more work to be popularized to the public. Maybe we'll finally get this in Windows 1124H2 or the next Windows version.