Updated: July 11, 2020 (September 24, 2012)

Comparing NTFS and ReFS Capabilities

Wes Miller analyzes and writes about Microsoft’s security, identity management, and systems management technologies. Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Wes... more

The Resilient File System (ReFS) significantly expands storage capacity in Windows, increasing capacity storage volumes, file size, and other capacity boundaries over those of the NT File System (NTFS).

Limit	NTFS	ReFS
Maximum size of a single file	Windows 8: 16 Terabytes (TB) with a 4 Kilobyte (KB) Cluster Size 256 TB with a 64KB Cluster Size Windows 7 and earlier: Up to 16TB	16 Exabytes (EB) (2⁶⁴ bytes) minus one byte
Maximum size of a single volume	16TB with a 4KB Cluster Size or 256TB with a 64KB Cluster Size	16EB
Maximum number of files in a directory	2³²-1	2⁶⁴
Maximum number of directories in a volume	2³²-1	2⁶⁴
Maximum number of files in a volume	4,294,967,295 (2³² minus 1 file)	No limit

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