WinFS: The next-generation file system that never was
Although NTFS works fine for most people’s needs, it hasn’t been updated in more than 20 years. Surely someone’s had some fresh ideas about data storage since then?
Someone has. In 2003, Microsoft unveiled the first beta of a whole new file system called WinFS. Strictly speaking, this was an extension that sat on top of NTFS, but it brought a radical new approach to storage, treating the disk not as a simple repository for binary data but as a database.
Under WinFS, applications would save information using standardised schemas for images, documents, sound files and so forth, with extensive metadata to describe and expose the contents. This provided a powerful way for users to search for and access the information within their files, and for programs to extract and use data created by other applications – a key principle of Microsoft’s next-generation Longhorn project, which would eventually become Windows Vista.
However, while WinFS worked as a proof of concept, it was slow compared to “raw” NTFS, and applications required major rewrites to take full advantage of it. At the time, commentator Paul Thurrott predicted that “until third-party developers support WinFS with truly innovative applications, it’s unlikely that this technology will be of much interest to anyone”.
Vista, meanwhile, was falling behind schedule (the intention had been to launch it in 2003; it didn’t appear until four years later). To keep things moving, Microsoft decided the new OS would launch with the tried and tested NTFS, and that WinFS would be added in at some later date. Eventually, the project was abandoned.
While WinFS is gone, it’s not forgotten. In a 2013 “ask me anything” session on Reddit, Bill Gates identified WinFS as the cancelled Microsoft project that he most wished had shipped. In his view, the idea failed because it was simply “ahead of its time” – and he predicted that the concept would re-emerge in the cloud era, with the server and client parsing and understanding data much more deeply than at present. The vision of WinFS could yet have its day.