22 ms·

Windows 10 October 2018 Update no longer deletes your data

175 points by ivank 8y ago

sajithdilshan 8y ago
I suppose the developer who thought it was a good idea to delete a non empty directory was high at the time he implemented it. But, how this went pass through QA is entirely a mystery to me.
- nnq 8y ago
  YOU are their QA department if you're using a non-enterprise version of Windows! Wake up and use Linux or buy a Mac (at least Apple only mocks your wallet!).
  - Yuioup 8y ago
    use Linux Yay and become a beta tester for life.
    - qball 8y ago
      As opposed to what, being a beta tester for life _and_ paying 200 dollars for the privilege like you apparently do with Windows now?
- chrisper 8y ago
  It's pretty simple. Because there isn't a QA. Microsoft laid them off and uses the "Insiders" as beta testers. But they reported this issue but Microsoft ignored it because it didn't get enough votes. https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917363713 https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...
  - sajithdilshan 8y ago
    Wow... This is not acceptable at all. They should have a team to go through these and at least prioritise the tickets instead of just relying on upvote. I'm pretty sure Microsoft can afford that.
    - ken 8y ago
      That is literally the last paragraph of the article.
      - addicted 8y ago
        I don’t believe it is. The parent said MS should have a team that manually sifts through raised bugs and sets severity. From the article it appears that MS is instead adding the ability for the bug reporters to set the severity. That’s definitely not as good a solution because everyone thinks their issue is the most severe.
  - PascLeRasc 8y ago
    They must have been storing the vote database in C:\Users\Documents
  - addicted 8y ago
    I’ve read this comment about MS getting rid of their QA in a lot of places. Is that something they actually really did or is it something that people say because their QA quality has dropped significantly (which as in Apple’s case could be due to the increased release cadence).
    - rincebrain 8y ago
      To quote the citations I used in another comment about this... [1] - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-did-microsoft-lay-off-programmatic-testers/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-d... [2] - https://www.computerworld.com/article/2878026/microsoft-to-business-dont-worry-about-windows-10-consumers-will-test-it.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2878026/microsoft-to-b... [3] - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/4/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-m...
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  Sounds more like a business/product owner request given to a developer who has been told one too many times they are too negative when being given new stories to work on. But I might just be projecting.
- elboru 8y ago
  I don't think this was a single developer mistake (that would be easy to spot), instead this was a solution for a problem so it was a requirement for the new update.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  It's the Microsoft mindset that they rule the world and everything works the Microsoft way. Not only do other operating systems not exist (yes yes Linux subsystem for win 10 whatever), but every software vendor and user is assumed to use the system exactly the way it was intended. That means no app will have the path to the original folder hardcoded instead of querying it the official way, and no user will mnavigate to the old pre-redirect location manually for any reason. By that definition, the folder can only be empty, so it's safe to delete it, recursively, since deleting an empty folder recursively is no different from deleting it non-recursively.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
That's good progress - congratulations, Microsoft! Frankly, I can't understand why - having a dominant position on the market - they seem to do everything to drive people away from their platform. It's not like we're in the 90s and there is no other choice.
- setquk 8y ago
  There are other choices but they all have limitations as well therefore it always ends up with better than devil you know.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  For most people there is no other choice. I mean MacOS requires a relatively expansive machine to run it, and many business-critical software either doesn’t run on Macs, or has drastically reduced functionality. Linux isn’t even worth bothering with if one isn’t technical. So really, we are left with Windows.
  - blackbrokkoli 8y ago
    Linux one is just untrue. If you're not technical, just go with Mint. Looks like Windows 7, behaves like Windows 7, doesn't break. You don't have to leave GUI environments once, neither in installation nor in usage. Doesn't break. Gives you the opportunity to optimize your workflow if you want to.
    - Endy 8y ago
      Mint broke all over the place on all the machines I've ever installed it on. Couldn't get graphics, sound, or networking running smoothly. Complete disaster with my built-in Bluetooth and my BT mice & keyboards. And doesn't behave like Win7 when it comes to actual programs. .deb is not .exe, .bat files didn't work, programs needed to come from a central app store or else be "compiled". Drive names were completely whacked as well. My optical drive wasn't D:\ and I had no idea how to find a DVD through that version of VLC, my main HDD wasn't C:\; and my USB floppy drive (yes, I still have one) didn't plug in as A:\. No version of Linux "behaves like Windows 7". At best, it's like Linux wearing a bedsheet-ghost costume labelled "Windows 7" and screaming BOO! at you every time you do anything from a DOS/Windows background.
lambada 8y ago
Amazing that such a simple bug made it all the way through testing. Just goes to show that testing isn’t foolproof!
- setquk 8y ago
  Their QA is nothing short of shitty at the moment therefore I suspect this is business as usual going forwards. Windows 10 is literally death by a thousand paper cuts for me.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    Imagine a car-repair men standing besides your car, smiling "Your car will no longer spontaneously combust and kill those inside!" like that is a achievement to the previous incarnation. If you want your files to be save, switch to linux. This - for lack of a better term - company obviously considers deleting them a case that can occasionally happen. And all those additional backups, the time invested into that- makes windows to expensive as a system- even for free.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    I've switched from macOS to Win10+WSL as my main dev machine this summer, mainly because I like Thinkpad hardware much more (and wanted to give the standard OS there a try), but I'm close to giving up on it and switching to Linux. It's crazy how much crap it throws at you at a daily basis. * explorer, and even in general file operations are dead slow for some reason. an expand of a zip from explorer with a couple of 10s of thousands of files can take an hour, while in WSL takes maybe a minute. explorer also takes its sweet time to load, including in open dialogs. This being on a near top-of-the-line 480s with 24GB Ram and 1TB SSD. * windows don't remember their previous position on multi-screens. * copying in terminal sometimes seems to work, sometimes not. * terminal beeps at you on every tab with more than one option, always have to keep sound muted. * bluetooth menu is glitchy and there's no standard quick way to connect to a previous device. * no idea whether that's win10, spotify or thinkpad software, but hitting a media key produces a NON DISMISSIBLE big overlay for spotify that just hangs there for a good 10 seconds and blocks the stuff I want to click. * solution for a full taskbar? just make it scroll with very small scroll buttons... * some older Logitech mouse I connect has buggy assignment of forward/back keys - does a completely random operation instead. Windows doesn't seem to have a GUI-way to set this stuff up * terminal has no tabs and crappy colors and I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of trying to integrate WSL with a non-default terminal emulator. I've installed the spring update, won't touch october one for a while at least. * there's no integration of WSL & windows GUI layer. Have to start an X-Server separately and have Linux GUI-tools instead. If I seriously need that I will simply switch to a Linux distro instead (which given the above I start to suspect I should have done from the beginning).
Tempest1981 8y ago
Good write-up. So if I didn’t move any special Known Folders to a different drive, I should be ok?
- magnat 8y ago
  > Adding insult to injury, there are ways in which Windows users could have enabled KFR without really knowing that they did so or meaning to do so. The OneDrive client, for example, can set up KFR for the Documents and Pictures folders, if you choose to enable automatic saving of documents and pictures to OneDrive.
  - makomk 8y ago
    Worse still, the OneDrive client apparently left documents in the original locations which the Windows update would then delete: > The current OneDrive client will set up KFR and then move any files from their original location to the new OneDrive location. Older versions of the OneDrive client, however, would set up KFR but leave existing files in the old location. The October 2018 Update would then destroy those files. Microsoft's own software which they bundled with Windows 10 and nagged Windows 10 users to set up and use triggered a data loss bug which caused Windows 10 to delete those users' documents - all because Microsoft didn't think it through, didn't test properly, and didn't take any notice of data loss reports from external beta testers.
tinco 8y ago
I would have been bitten by this bug. All my Known Folders are redirected to be in a separate hard drive so I can switch them to a new system more easily when I upgrade. It also stems from when SSD's were too expensive to store anything but your OS and your applications on. A whole bunch of applications do the bad thing Microsoft is talking about, and hardcode the path to 'My Documents'. I have a ghost 'My Documents' folder that has mostly app settings and maybe some save files.
- Already__Taken 8y ago
  You could use an ntfs junction then nothing has to understand the settings.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    I was actually surprised that this isn't how redirection is implemented. Seems like an easy enough fix that would catch everything.
    - wtallis 8y ago
      Microsoft prefers to never miss an opportunity to make their file browser lie about the state of the underlying filesystem.
      - detaro 8y ago
        In what way does explorer lie about the location of a redirected documents folder?
        jplayer01 8y ago
        It's incredibly vague about where you actually are when you're using redirected known folders vs accessing the original folder.
        deleted 8y ago
walterbell 8y ago
Is there a commercial PC for sale which supports Windows 7, e.g. is there an OEM with a desktop offering with a Skylake CPU?
- pishpash 8y ago
  Is Windows still a big business for MS? Maybe they don't care any more, having Azure.
  - phatfish 8y ago
    Judging from the state or Server 2016/Windows 10 updates I suspect not. How a rollup update for 2016 takes 30 mins+ to install (and often fails), yet the 2012 rollup is done in 10 mins is still baffling. This is on 2012 machines with much longer update histories.
- userbinator 8y ago
  People have gotten XP running on Haswell so I don't think running 7 on Skylake would be a problem. msfn.org has some useful information on running (very) old OSs on new hardware.
- stinky613 8y ago
  You could try checking outlet.dell.com and filtering by 6th gen CPUs. You'll have to get your Win7 install media and key separately, though.
- xoa 8y ago
  If you want to run an older OS have you considered just running a hypervisor like ESXi or KVM and then handling OS through that? There are lots of good solutions there at this point, and it can be a fun way to play with a lot of other cool features and different OS as well. You can even get near-native performance even for heavy duty graphics applications by using PCI passthrough. The only caveat that adds for hardware choice is that you'll want a processor with an IOMMU for the hardware virtualization support (AMD calls this "AMD-Vi", Intel "VT-d"). AMD is pretty good about not artificially segmenting there, I think everything modern they make supports it (all Ryzen/EPYC at least) though probably worth double checking overall system compat. Intel splits this all up more, Xeon always has everything but support varies elsewhere and you really just have to check the specs. Even so that gives a ton of hardware choice and flexibility, and will give you more options to protect and control the systems beyond the OS themselves which is very important if you want to run something older since security patches will stop. But if you're judicious about what you use for what tasks and how you handle I/O it offers another option, and can make hardware changes a lot easier as well by abstracting away the metal somewhat. Basically a lot of the advantages that make virtualization so popular in general for business can be just as applicable at home these days, most of us have cycles and memory to spare and can afford to burn a bit of it on making a more pleasant software experience or working around issues coming from a higher level. In this case for example you could be running your Windows VM on virtual disks on a NAS/DAS or even the same system but supporting better snapshotting, and if the data was deleted simply roll back the entire VM to pre-upgrade state.
cmroanirgo 8y ago
I would dispute this fact. Just yesterday I saw that my brother's Win10 desktop was magically empty after he'd rebooted due to windows update. After hunting around for solutions, (none of which worked), I noticed that all the missing desktop files were magically in the recycle bin. Nice work M$. From memory, the update was #1803, so not sure if this is relevant to the arctechnica article... but since it was yesterday, it's clearly not 100% accurate. (PS: No, my brother didn't cause them to be put there)
- ttkari 8y ago
  I wonder if Microsoft is able to cancel the installation of already downloaded updates - if not, something like this might happen if the erroneous update was already downloaded in the background earlier. I think the default setting is that updates will be downloaded automatically and then installed later whenever the system decides there is a suitable period of "inactive time".
  - ragequitta 8y ago
    The update that deleted files wasn't ever an automatic one. You would have had to manually update. Fingers crossed they didn't mess up another. Seems unlikely.
    - userbinator 8y ago
      Imagine the response if it was a forced automatic update... ...and this is why I never trust automatic updates. Hard to tell what caused something if the system is silently changing under you.
- ajnin 8y ago
  The update in question here is #1809; so it's possible your brother encountered another data loss bug, which, considering their current state of QA, doesn't seem that unlikely. By default the recycle bin has a limit of how much files it can store, and if you try to put more in there it will be deleted. It'll ask when you do the operation, but it if was done automatically as part of the update, who knows. A safety net with such big holes never made sense to me so that's why I always change the limit to 100% of the disk size. Your brother was lucky to recover his files.
Endy 8y ago
"No longer". That's a very bad sign about QC and how confident the major retailers are that we're not going to switch to a different and more stable OS. The problem is that they're right, because Unix/Linux/etc was never and is not meant to be a single-user desktop home OS for the general public. Of course, random broken updates completely bricking your system should be no surprise to those users either. Anybody got a suggestion for an OS I can use that exists on hard media, doesn't use kernel or base OS code that's been distributed digitally and has optional completely non-destructive updates via hard media no more than once a year, so that I'm not feeling like I'm trying to hit a moving target with the stuff I want to use, and it either works or not until a year later?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  A live DVD of some Linux variant (Puppy or Alpine come to mind)? I'm not sure that I would want to run it for that long unless you figure out some way to run your browser off a different device, though; security updates aren't something that's safe to put off for a year.
  - checkyoursudo 8y ago
    Can download the binary Moz-distributed FF and unpack it wherever, then run $wherever/firefox. I think currently needs PulseAudio if you want audio, so that might limit what distro one can use. There can also be some traps with missing libraries, so very stripped down distro might be unusable. Otherwise, just check Moz website for updates every couple months?
- rleigh 8y ago
  It certainly brings the suitability of Windows for production use into question. Not only this bug, which is outrageous, but the direction of Windows 10 in general before this.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  At worst Linux updates might screw up your system and render it non-bootable. I'm not aware of any bugs in the past 20ish years where your home folder was deleted.
jve 8y ago
Looks like someone didn't do their job correctly. Carrying on a destructive action (DELETE) without first checking whether that folder contains any files (except maybe desktop.ini)...
- kgwxd 8y ago
  Just because a folder is currently empty doesnt mean its not used and assumed to exist by some program. Delete shouldnt have been called, period.
  - stinky613 8y ago
    I won't try to defend their execution, but I think they're trying to solve a legitimate issue. It's really confusing to an end-user if they see two Documents folders. And I'm certain that I've personally encountered instances where both Documents folders had the Documents special folder icon (though I'm not sure if I've seen this on Win10, specifically)
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      Maybe just fix that bug instead of deleting user data? Just a thought.
      - gruez 8y ago
        It's not even a bug
        jplayer01 8y ago
        You don't think it's a bug when two folders get the same special icon that one usually associates with one specific location? That's a huge UI bug.
        gruez 8y ago
        >two folders get the same special icon Nope, I just tested, only 1 folder gets the special icon.
breakingcups 8y ago
"Microsoft is advising anyone affected by the bug to contact support." Yeah right, I'm sure that will be fruitful.
- mariusmg 8y ago
  Might be, they provide a undelete tool to recover the files
  - jug 8y ago
    Yes, I read about this earlier and along with the support tip was the "and don't touch your PC" tip. So I'm pretty sure they'll advise some undelete tool and until then they don't want deleted data to get overwritten, but no more magical solution than that.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Every once in a while an MS support thread actually has a useful answer in it... given by some random internet commenter about 15 posts after MS support has determined only a reinstall will fix the problem.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  If the DoJ couldn't sue them, I wish the poor person who lost all their family photos good luck.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    The DoJ could and did, but backed off when a friendlier administration took over. Elections have consequences, even if they singing are on issues most voters aren't considering.
yumashka 8y ago
Citation: "When KFR is being used, the October 2018 Update will delete the original, default Known Folder locations. Microsoft imagined that this would simply remove some empty, redundant directories from your user profile. No need to have a Documents directory in your profile if you're using a redirected location, after all." Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. I have redirected Documents. And there are A LOT of programs that directly try to use C:\Users\user\Documents instead of redirected.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. That's not "harsh", harsh is what happened to the unlucky users who lost data because no one on the development team bothered to call it out. It should be an implicitly understood rule that you NEVER remove a file you did not create, unless the user explicitly asked to, but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too.
  - cesarb 8y ago
    > but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too. This. Once you get in the mindset that you know better than the user, it's not a big jump to "I know these directories should be empty, any content is leftover garbage, let's remove them".
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    Microsoft doesn’t consider the OS to be the “user’s system”. They clearly see it as something they rent to the user a little bit each day. If the user wants to keep the system for a little longer, he/she has to make a special request to Microsoft that they hold off for a bit before retaking control of the OS.
    - 8y ago
agumonkey 8y ago
What a time we're living in
bitL 8y ago
Title really feels like from The Onion, not fitting 2018, more like 1988. Something terrible must have happened to the Universe's hypervisor lately...
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
This is a total disgrace. The company that's worth how many 100 of billions.. and this happens. Complete and utter farce.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
Yay! Windows won't delete my data anymore!! I can't believe I can say that.
bitlax 8y ago
Thanks for doing the bare minimum.
dep_b 8y ago
Next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
- e12e 8y ago
  s/Linux/ReactOS/
jplayer01 8y ago
Honestly, I don't care. I've disabled Windows updates for the time being since I no longer trust their update QA. I can deal with a non-functioning system. I can't deal with files being deleted outright that don't belong to the system in any way.
hanselot 8y ago
explicitly...
clircle 8y ago
I'm seriously considering using a pirated version of LTSB for my next build...
- thrower123 8y ago
  LTSB is just lovely. Maybe the best part of having access to an MSDN subscription these days. It'd be worth paying a premium for as a consumer, if they ever wanted to; manufacturers are slighly better than they once were, but it's still a necessary first step to wipe disks and install a crapware free Windows immediately on a new machine, and LTSB is far and away the best for that. WSL would be nice, but it's better all in all to just spin up a ubuntu vm in hyperv.
circa 8y ago
I believe it also broke the File History and Windows Backup (if you use those). I had a client I had to restore from backups. Thankfully they only lost 1 small file in the mix of it all.
tcfunk 8y ago
"All your files are exactly where you left them"
- userbinator 8y ago
  "...we just marked them as deleted." That was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news about the bug --- the infamous creepy message just got an even scarier meaning. https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3x88yj/all_your_files_are_where_you_left_them_what_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3x88yj/all_your_fi... I really wonder what goes on at MS to have consensus to think such messages were ever a good idea. Even if the message is true, it scares the users because it's like ransomware. If it isn't, that's even worse because you're now lying to your users. In any case, they arouse suspicion and fear. In the XP days, I believe updates would, after restarting, at most show a dialog with a more informative message ("Installing updates...") and a progress bar, and more importantly, your wallpaper and desktop would continue loading in the background --- the latter really helps with the unease, if not the annoyance. The full-screen, vague, and unnecessary messages just invoke feelings of horror.
davidf18 8y ago
Speaking as someone who has whose undergrad degree is in Electrical Engineering from a top-rated school and who worked designing computer chips for 4 years, Windows is not properly engineering its software. I also have extensive software experience. Microsoft appears to be relying on users to do their testing instead of making their testing as part of the overall engineering process. [1] [2] Can you imagine Boeing asking passengers to test their airframes or GE asking passengers to test their jet engines? In Mac office, there is a bug with the new upgrade to Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave) where "recent files" local to the Mac are not retained (but those to the cloud are). Proper engineering means that there are testing protocols followed while developing the product. The fact that such as simple bug as Recent files was not tested speaks a lot to the lack of proper testing of the software as does this Windows 10 bug. Neither Microsoft nor Facebook, nor Google have people with engineering degrees mentored in engineering as their leadership and I doubt that there are many board members who have the requisite engineering education and experience. I was mentored in a particular set of processes for ensuring proper design of computer chips and this process is simply lacking in many software systems. Not all bugs can be caught by testing, many have to be prevented in the first place through proper processes. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246685-microsoft-claims-10-million-fans-help-test-windows-10-but-its-sure-got-a-funny-definition-of-that-word https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246685-microsoft-claim... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3s14un/just_a_reminder_that_one_year_ago_microsoft_fired/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3s14un/just_a_remi...
nnq 8y ago
This is what you get when you adopt the "let users do the qa/testing/beta-testing for us for free". The whole attitude behind Windows 10 "continuous updates" instead of actual releases that are actually alpha-tested and beta-tested by actual hired testers on multiple machines is disgusting and offensive to the user! An operating system needs to be a boring "rock-solid foundation", it doesn't need frequent updates and experimentation, that's what apps are for. Use Linux or buy a Mac. Microsoft always is and always will be horrible to end-users. They maybe cool in the enterprise sphere, and when it comes to open-source, and when it comes to developer tools and languages (I use lots of MS stuff... but run then on a Linux system!), but they don't care about regular end users since most of them "can't cast a vote" in deciding the system they use and where money goes to.
thrower123 8y ago
I guess I'm glad that I don't use any of those folders... I just dump everything into category folders at the root of my data partition, e.g. G:\Code, G;\Pictures, G:\Downloads, etc. The entire Users directory ends up being such an unimaginable cesspool on a Windows machine that has seen any significant service time, with this, that, and everything else poking and prodding and leaving its detritus inside. My desktop is essentially a single-user machine, as most Windows laptops and desktops are, but even on servers where user accounts are actually used, I spend an undue amount of time fiddlefrigging to take ownership and permissions on files because some script I need is saved to a different account's desktop. Bailing out of the whole thing and running your own filesystem shouldn't be easier, but it is.
- gtyras2mrs 8y ago
  I don’t use the directory myself - but plenty of programs dump data into it. I held off updating because I didn’t want Windows wiping out all my game saves for example.
makecheck 8y ago
Recursive delete has always been a misfeature of computing, out of a mistaken entitlement to convenience when you are performing a fundamentally risky operation on a target you can never know the state of. At best, it is redundant with a recursive search feature that chooses “delete” as the operation. And if you want “do something else then delete”, you can no longer call a recursive-delete command anyway so why not just learn how to enumerate files first and give your system a fighting chance to audit first? Disk cleanup code should always create lists of known target files, attempt to delete only that list of files, then do the platform equivalent of “rmdir” at the end to attempt to remove the directory. If that fails, congratulations: your ass was saved by not deleting something you didn’t know was there.
drbawb 8y ago
Tangential to this when are operating systems going to ship w/ CoW filesystems by default? Accidental deletion of critical directories has been a solved problem for years now. I take instant snapshots of my home directory on ZFS every hour, my boot environment is snapshotted before every update. You could literally remove my entire root directory and at worst you've minorly inconvenienced me: I now have to boot from a USB drive and run `zfs rollback` to the most recent snapshot. I'd be impervious to most ransomware as well: my home directory is filled w/ garbage now? Good thing it can't encrypt my read only snapshots, even with root access. Oh and I can serialize those snapshots across the network at the block level before I nuke the infected machine. Of course humanity will always invent a bigger idiot, so it's possible a virus could gain root & exec some dangerous ZFS commands, or it's possible some MSFT employee could pass the `-r` flag and recursively delete a dataset & its snapshots in their post-update script. Plus let's not forget that no filesystem in the world will stop you from just zero-filling the drive. Still it's easy for me to imagine a world where I'm completely impervious from ransomware: by way of only being able to delete critical snapshots when a hardware key is present or when my TPM is unlocked. On the whole it seems to me CoW filesystems are a major step forward in safe-guarding users from accidental deletions. At a minimum they have other benefits (serialized incremental send streams, block level compression & dedup, etc.) that make backups easier to manage. -- Yet I still can't boot from ReFS on Windows.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  Last time Microsoft decided to replace NTFS with something modern, they took about 15 years to give up. If they start now, we can expect them to give up roughly in 2033.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    They tried radical, that's why it was slow and sadly painful. Now implementing CoW ideas is at MS reach easily and would bring commercial value easily, so it could go very differently.
  - rleigh 8y ago
    ZFS has now been ported to Windows. With some testing and polishing, maybe it will be something they could adopt in the future (I know, wishful thinking, but the technology is there).
rbanffy 8y ago
It's bugs, all the way down.
NVRM 8y ago
This should be a huge warning.

175 points by ivank 8y ago

I suppose the developer who thought it was a good idea to delete a non empty directory was high at the time he implemented it. But, how this went pass through QA is entirely a mystery to me.

nnq 8y ago
YOU are their QA department if you're using a non-enterprise version of Windows! Wake up and use Linux or buy a Mac (at least Apple only mocks your wallet!).
- Yuioup 8y ago
  use Linux Yay and become a beta tester for life.
  - qball 8y ago
    As opposed to what, being a beta tester for life _and_ paying 200 dollars for the privilege like you apparently do with Windows now?
chrisper 8y ago
It's pretty simple. Because there isn't a QA. Microsoft laid them off and uses the "Insiders" as beta testers. But they reported this issue but Microsoft ignored it because it didn't get enough votes. https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917363713 https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...
- sajithdilshan 8y ago
  Wow... This is not acceptable at all. They should have a team to go through these and at least prioritise the tickets instead of just relying on upvote. I'm pretty sure Microsoft can afford that.
  - ken 8y ago
    That is literally the last paragraph of the article.
    - addicted 8y ago
      I don’t believe it is. The parent said MS should have a team that manually sifts through raised bugs and sets severity. From the article it appears that MS is instead adding the ability for the bug reporters to set the severity. That’s definitely not as good a solution because everyone thinks their issue is the most severe.
- PascLeRasc 8y ago
  They must have been storing the vote database in C:\Users\Documents
- addicted 8y ago
  I’ve read this comment about MS getting rid of their QA in a lot of places. Is that something they actually really did or is it something that people say because their QA quality has dropped significantly (which as in Apple’s case could be due to the increased release cadence).
  - rincebrain 8y ago
    To quote the citations I used in another comment about this... [1] - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-did-microsoft-lay-off-programmatic-testers/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140806183208-12100070-why-d... [2] - https://www.computerworld.com/article/2878026/microsoft-to-business-dont-worry-about-windows-10-consumers-will-test-it.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2878026/microsoft-to-b... [3] - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/4/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-m...
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
Sounds more like a business/product owner request given to a developer who has been told one too many times they are too negative when being given new stories to work on. But I might just be projecting.
elboru 8y ago
I don't think this was a single developer mistake (that would be easy to spot), instead this was a solution for a problem so it was a requirement for the new update.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
It's the Microsoft mindset that they rule the world and everything works the Microsoft way. Not only do other operating systems not exist (yes yes Linux subsystem for win 10 whatever), but every software vendor and user is assumed to use the system exactly the way it was intended. That means no app will have the path to the original folder hardcoded instead of querying it the official way, and no user will mnavigate to the old pre-redirect location manually for any reason. By that definition, the folder can only be empty, so it's safe to delete it, recursively, since deleting an empty folder recursively is no different from deleting it non-recursively.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

That's good progress - congratulations, Microsoft! Frankly, I can't understand why - having a dominant position on the market - they seem to do everything to drive people away from their platform. It's not like we're in the 90s and there is no other choice.

setquk 8y ago
There are other choices but they all have limitations as well therefore it always ends up with better than devil you know.
enraged_camel 8y ago
For most people there is no other choice. I mean MacOS requires a relatively expansive machine to run it, and many business-critical software either doesn’t run on Macs, or has drastically reduced functionality. Linux isn’t even worth bothering with if one isn’t technical. So really, we are left with Windows.
- blackbrokkoli 8y ago
  Linux one is just untrue. If you're not technical, just go with Mint. Looks like Windows 7, behaves like Windows 7, doesn't break. You don't have to leave GUI environments once, neither in installation nor in usage. Doesn't break. Gives you the opportunity to optimize your workflow if you want to.
  - Endy 8y ago
    Mint broke all over the place on all the machines I've ever installed it on. Couldn't get graphics, sound, or networking running smoothly. Complete disaster with my built-in Bluetooth and my BT mice & keyboards. And doesn't behave like Win7 when it comes to actual programs. .deb is not .exe, .bat files didn't work, programs needed to come from a central app store or else be "compiled". Drive names were completely whacked as well. My optical drive wasn't D:\ and I had no idea how to find a DVD through that version of VLC, my main HDD wasn't C:\; and my USB floppy drive (yes, I still have one) didn't plug in as A:\. No version of Linux "behaves like Windows 7". At best, it's like Linux wearing a bedsheet-ghost costume labelled "Windows 7" and screaming BOO! at you every time you do anything from a DOS/Windows background.

lambada 8y ago

Amazing that such a simple bug made it all the way through testing. Just goes to show that testing isn’t foolproof!

setquk 8y ago
Their QA is nothing short of shitty at the moment therefore I suspect this is business as usual going forwards. Windows 10 is literally death by a thousand paper cuts for me.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Imagine a car-repair men standing besides your car, smiling "Your car will no longer spontaneously combust and kill those inside!" like that is a achievement to the previous incarnation. If you want your files to be save, switch to linux. This - for lack of a better term - company obviously considers deleting them a case that can occasionally happen. And all those additional backups, the time invested into that- makes windows to expensive as a system- even for free.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  I've switched from macOS to Win10+WSL as my main dev machine this summer, mainly because I like Thinkpad hardware much more (and wanted to give the standard OS there a try), but I'm close to giving up on it and switching to Linux. It's crazy how much crap it throws at you at a daily basis. * explorer, and even in general file operations are dead slow for some reason. an expand of a zip from explorer with a couple of 10s of thousands of files can take an hour, while in WSL takes maybe a minute. explorer also takes its sweet time to load, including in open dialogs. This being on a near top-of-the-line 480s with 24GB Ram and 1TB SSD. * windows don't remember their previous position on multi-screens. * copying in terminal sometimes seems to work, sometimes not. * terminal beeps at you on every tab with more than one option, always have to keep sound muted. * bluetooth menu is glitchy and there's no standard quick way to connect to a previous device. * no idea whether that's win10, spotify or thinkpad software, but hitting a media key produces a NON DISMISSIBLE big overlay for spotify that just hangs there for a good 10 seconds and blocks the stuff I want to click. * solution for a full taskbar? just make it scroll with very small scroll buttons... * some older Logitech mouse I connect has buggy assignment of forward/back keys - does a completely random operation instead. Windows doesn't seem to have a GUI-way to set this stuff up * terminal has no tabs and crappy colors and I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of trying to integrate WSL with a non-default terminal emulator. I've installed the spring update, won't touch october one for a while at least. * there's no integration of WSL & windows GUI layer. Have to start an X-Server separately and have Linux GUI-tools instead. If I seriously need that I will simply switch to a Linux distro instead (which given the above I start to suspect I should have done from the beginning).

Tempest1981 8y ago

Good write-up. So if I didn’t move any special Known Folders to a different drive, I should be ok?

magnat 8y ago
> Adding insult to injury, there are ways in which Windows users could have enabled KFR without really knowing that they did so or meaning to do so. The OneDrive client, for example, can set up KFR for the Documents and Pictures folders, if you choose to enable automatic saving of documents and pictures to OneDrive.
- makomk 8y ago
  Worse still, the OneDrive client apparently left documents in the original locations which the Windows update would then delete: > The current OneDrive client will set up KFR and then move any files from their original location to the new OneDrive location. Older versions of the OneDrive client, however, would set up KFR but leave existing files in the old location. The October 2018 Update would then destroy those files. Microsoft's own software which they bundled with Windows 10 and nagged Windows 10 users to set up and use triggered a data loss bug which caused Windows 10 to delete those users' documents - all because Microsoft didn't think it through, didn't test properly, and didn't take any notice of data loss reports from external beta testers.

tinco 8y ago

I would have been bitten by this bug. All my Known Folders are redirected to be in a separate hard drive so I can switch them to a new system more easily when I upgrade. It also stems from when SSD's were too expensive to store anything but your OS and your applications on. A whole bunch of applications do the bad thing Microsoft is talking about, and hardcode the path to 'My Documents'. I have a ghost 'My Documents' folder that has mostly app settings and maybe some save files.

Already__Taken 8y ago
You could use an ntfs junction then nothing has to understand the settings.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  I was actually surprised that this isn't how redirection is implemented. Seems like an easy enough fix that would catch everything.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    Microsoft prefers to never miss an opportunity to make their file browser lie about the state of the underlying filesystem.
    - detaro 8y ago
      In what way does explorer lie about the location of a redirected documents folder?
      - jplayer01 8y ago
        It's incredibly vague about where you actually are when you're using redirected known folders vs accessing the original folder.
        deleted 8y ago

walterbell 8y ago

Is there a commercial PC for sale which supports Windows 7, e.g. is there an OEM with a desktop offering with a Skylake CPU?

pishpash 8y ago
Is Windows still a big business for MS? Maybe they don't care any more, having Azure.
- phatfish 8y ago
  Judging from the state or Server 2016/Windows 10 updates I suspect not. How a rollup update for 2016 takes 30 mins+ to install (and often fails), yet the 2012 rollup is done in 10 mins is still baffling. This is on 2012 machines with much longer update histories.
userbinator 8y ago
People have gotten XP running on Haswell so I don't think running 7 on Skylake would be a problem. msfn.org has some useful information on running (very) old OSs on new hardware.
stinky613 8y ago
You could try checking outlet.dell.com and filtering by 6th gen CPUs. You'll have to get your Win7 install media and key separately, though.
xoa 8y ago
If you want to run an older OS have you considered just running a hypervisor like ESXi or KVM and then handling OS through that? There are lots of good solutions there at this point, and it can be a fun way to play with a lot of other cool features and different OS as well. You can even get near-native performance even for heavy duty graphics applications by using PCI passthrough. The only caveat that adds for hardware choice is that you'll want a processor with an IOMMU for the hardware virtualization support (AMD calls this "AMD-Vi", Intel "VT-d"). AMD is pretty good about not artificially segmenting there, I think everything modern they make supports it (all Ryzen/EPYC at least) though probably worth double checking overall system compat. Intel splits this all up more, Xeon always has everything but support varies elsewhere and you really just have to check the specs. Even so that gives a ton of hardware choice and flexibility, and will give you more options to protect and control the systems beyond the OS themselves which is very important if you want to run something older since security patches will stop. But if you're judicious about what you use for what tasks and how you handle I/O it offers another option, and can make hardware changes a lot easier as well by abstracting away the metal somewhat. Basically a lot of the advantages that make virtualization so popular in general for business can be just as applicable at home these days, most of us have cycles and memory to spare and can afford to burn a bit of it on making a more pleasant software experience or working around issues coming from a higher level. In this case for example you could be running your Windows VM on virtual disks on a NAS/DAS or even the same system but supporting better snapshotting, and if the data was deleted simply roll back the entire VM to pre-upgrade state.

cmroanirgo 8y ago

I would dispute this fact. Just yesterday I saw that my brother's Win10 desktop was magically empty after he'd rebooted due to windows update. After hunting around for solutions, (none of which worked), I noticed that all the missing desktop files were magically in the recycle bin. Nice work M$. From memory, the update was #1803, so not sure if this is relevant to the arctechnica article... but since it was yesterday, it's clearly not 100% accurate. (PS: No, my brother didn't cause them to be put there)

ttkari 8y ago
I wonder if Microsoft is able to cancel the installation of already downloaded updates - if not, something like this might happen if the erroneous update was already downloaded in the background earlier. I think the default setting is that updates will be downloaded automatically and then installed later whenever the system decides there is a suitable period of "inactive time".
- ragequitta 8y ago
  The update that deleted files wasn't ever an automatic one. You would have had to manually update. Fingers crossed they didn't mess up another. Seems unlikely.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    Imagine the response if it was a forced automatic update... ...and this is why I never trust automatic updates. Hard to tell what caused something if the system is silently changing under you.
ajnin 8y ago
The update in question here is #1809; so it's possible your brother encountered another data loss bug, which, considering their current state of QA, doesn't seem that unlikely. By default the recycle bin has a limit of how much files it can store, and if you try to put more in there it will be deleted. It'll ask when you do the operation, but it if was done automatically as part of the update, who knows. A safety net with such big holes never made sense to me so that's why I always change the limit to 100% of the disk size. Your brother was lucky to recover his files.

Endy 8y ago

"No longer". That's a very bad sign about QC and how confident the major retailers are that we're not going to switch to a different and more stable OS. The problem is that they're right, because Unix/Linux/etc was never and is not meant to be a single-user desktop home OS for the general public. Of course, random broken updates completely bricking your system should be no surprise to those users either. Anybody got a suggestion for an OS I can use that exists on hard media, doesn't use kernel or base OS code that's been distributed digitally and has optional completely non-destructive updates via hard media no more than once a year, so that I'm not feeling like I'm trying to hit a moving target with the stuff I want to use, and it either works or not until a year later?

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
A live DVD of some Linux variant (Puppy or Alpine come to mind)? I'm not sure that I would want to run it for that long unless you figure out some way to run your browser off a different device, though; security updates aren't something that's safe to put off for a year.
- checkyoursudo 8y ago
  Can download the binary Moz-distributed FF and unpack it wherever, then run $wherever/firefox. I think currently needs PulseAudio if you want audio, so that might limit what distro one can use. There can also be some traps with missing libraries, so very stripped down distro might be unusable. Otherwise, just check Moz website for updates every couple months?
rleigh 8y ago
It certainly brings the suitability of Windows for production use into question. Not only this bug, which is outrageous, but the direction of Windows 10 in general before this.
jplayer01 8y ago
At worst Linux updates might screw up your system and render it non-bootable. I'm not aware of any bugs in the past 20ish years where your home folder was deleted.

jve 8y ago

Looks like someone didn't do their job correctly. Carrying on a destructive action (DELETE) without first checking whether that folder contains any files (except maybe desktop.ini)...

kgwxd 8y ago
Just because a folder is currently empty doesnt mean its not used and assumed to exist by some program. Delete shouldnt have been called, period.
- stinky613 8y ago
  I won't try to defend their execution, but I think they're trying to solve a legitimate issue. It's really confusing to an end-user if they see two Documents folders. And I'm certain that I've personally encountered instances where both Documents folders had the Documents special folder icon (though I'm not sure if I've seen this on Win10, specifically)
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    Maybe just fix that bug instead of deleting user data? Just a thought.
    - gruez 8y ago
      It's not even a bug
      - jplayer01 8y ago
        You don't think it's a bug when two folders get the same special icon that one usually associates with one specific location? That's a huge UI bug.
        gruez 8y ago
        >two folders get the same special icon Nope, I just tested, only 1 folder gets the special icon.

breakingcups 8y ago

"Microsoft is advising anyone affected by the bug to contact support." Yeah right, I'm sure that will be fruitful.

mariusmg 8y ago
Might be, they provide a undelete tool to recover the files
- jug 8y ago
  Yes, I read about this earlier and along with the support tip was the "and don't touch your PC" tip. So I'm pretty sure they'll advise some undelete tool and until then they don't want deleted data to get overwritten, but no more magical solution than that.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Every once in a while an MS support thread actually has a useful answer in it... given by some random internet commenter about 15 posts after MS support has determined only a reinstall will fix the problem.
rbanffy 8y ago
If the DoJ couldn't sue them, I wish the poor person who lost all their family photos good luck.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  The DoJ could and did, but backed off when a friendlier administration took over. Elections have consequences, even if they singing are on issues most voters aren't considering.

yumashka 8y ago

Citation: "When KFR is being used, the October 2018 Update will delete the original, default Known Folder locations. Microsoft imagined that this would simply remove some empty, redundant directories from your user profile. No need to have a Documents directory in your profile if you're using a redirected location, after all." Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. I have redirected Documents. And there are A LOT of programs that directly try to use C:\Users\user\Documents instead of redirected.

userbinator 8y ago
Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. That's not "harsh", harsh is what happened to the unlucky users who lost data because no one on the development team bothered to call it out. It should be an implicitly understood rule that you NEVER remove a file you did not create, unless the user explicitly asked to, but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too.
- cesarb 8y ago
  > but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too. This. Once you get in the mindset that you know better than the user, it's not a big jump to "I know these directories should be empty, any content is leftover garbage, let's remove them".
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Microsoft doesn’t consider the OS to be the “user’s system”. They clearly see it as something they rent to the user a little bit each day. If the user wants to keep the system for a little longer, he/she has to make a special request to Microsoft that they hold off for a bit before retaking control of the OS.
  - 8y ago

agumonkey 8y ago

What a time we're living in

bitL 8y ago

Title really feels like from The Onion, not fitting 2018, more like 1988. Something terrible must have happened to the Universe's hypervisor lately...

throwawaymanbot 8y ago

This is a total disgrace. The company that's worth how many 100 of billions.. and this happens. Complete and utter farce.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

Yay! Windows won't delete my data anymore!! I can't believe I can say that.

bitlax 8y ago

Thanks for doing the bare minimum.

dep_b 8y ago

Next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop.

e12e 8y ago
s/Linux/ReactOS/

jplayer01 8y ago

Honestly, I don't care. I've disabled Windows updates for the time being since I no longer trust their update QA. I can deal with a non-functioning system. I can't deal with files being deleted outright that don't belong to the system in any way.

hanselot 8y ago

explicitly...

clircle 8y ago

I'm seriously considering using a pirated version of LTSB for my next build...

thrower123 8y ago
LTSB is just lovely. Maybe the best part of having access to an MSDN subscription these days. It'd be worth paying a premium for as a consumer, if they ever wanted to; manufacturers are slighly better than they once were, but it's still a necessary first step to wipe disks and install a crapware free Windows immediately on a new machine, and LTSB is far and away the best for that. WSL would be nice, but it's better all in all to just spin up a ubuntu vm in hyperv.

circa 8y ago

I believe it also broke the File History and Windows Backup (if you use those). I had a client I had to restore from backups. Thankfully they only lost 1 small file in the mix of it all.

tcfunk 8y ago

"All your files are exactly where you left them"

userbinator 8y ago
"...we just marked them as deleted." That was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news about the bug --- the infamous creepy message just got an even scarier meaning. https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3x88yj/all_your_files_are_where_you_left_them_what_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3x88yj/all_your_fi... I really wonder what goes on at MS to have consensus to think such messages were ever a good idea. Even if the message is true, it scares the users because it's like ransomware. If it isn't, that's even worse because you're now lying to your users. In any case, they arouse suspicion and fear. In the XP days, I believe updates would, after restarting, at most show a dialog with a more informative message ("Installing updates...") and a progress bar, and more importantly, your wallpaper and desktop would continue loading in the background --- the latter really helps with the unease, if not the annoyance. The full-screen, vague, and unnecessary messages just invoke feelings of horror.

davidf18 8y ago

Speaking as someone who has whose undergrad degree is in Electrical Engineering from a top-rated school and who worked designing computer chips for 4 years, Windows is not properly engineering its software. I also have extensive software experience. Microsoft appears to be relying on users to do their testing instead of making their testing as part of the overall engineering process. [1] [2] Can you imagine Boeing asking passengers to test their airframes or GE asking passengers to test their jet engines? In Mac office, there is a bug with the new upgrade to Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave) where "recent files" local to the Mac are not retained (but those to the cloud are). Proper engineering means that there are testing protocols followed while developing the product. The fact that such as simple bug as Recent files was not tested speaks a lot to the lack of proper testing of the software as does this Windows 10 bug. Neither Microsoft nor Facebook, nor Google have people with engineering degrees mentored in engineering as their leadership and I doubt that there are many board members who have the requisite engineering education and experience. I was mentored in a particular set of processes for ensuring proper design of computer chips and this process is simply lacking in many software systems. Not all bugs can be caught by testing, many have to be prevented in the first place through proper processes. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246685-microsoft-claims-10-million-fans-help-test-windows-10-but-its-sure-got-a-funny-definition-of-that-word https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246685-microsoft-claim... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3s14un/just_a_reminder_that_one_year_ago_microsoft_fired/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3s14un/just_a_remi...

nnq 8y ago

This is what you get when you adopt the "let users do the qa/testing/beta-testing for us for free". The whole attitude behind Windows 10 "continuous updates" instead of actual releases that are actually alpha-tested and beta-tested by actual hired testers on multiple machines is disgusting and offensive to the user! An operating system needs to be a boring "rock-solid foundation", it doesn't need frequent updates and experimentation, that's what apps are for. Use Linux or buy a Mac. Microsoft always is and always will be horrible to end-users. They maybe cool in the enterprise sphere, and when it comes to open-source, and when it comes to developer tools and languages (I use lots of MS stuff... but run then on a Linux system!), but they don't care about regular end users since most of them "can't cast a vote" in deciding the system they use and where money goes to.

thrower123 8y ago

I guess I'm glad that I don't use any of those folders... I just dump everything into category folders at the root of my data partition, e.g. G:\Code, G;\Pictures, G:\Downloads, etc. The entire Users directory ends up being such an unimaginable cesspool on a Windows machine that has seen any significant service time, with this, that, and everything else poking and prodding and leaving its detritus inside. My desktop is essentially a single-user machine, as most Windows laptops and desktops are, but even on servers where user accounts are actually used, I spend an undue amount of time fiddlefrigging to take ownership and permissions on files because some script I need is saved to a different account's desktop. Bailing out of the whole thing and running your own filesystem shouldn't be easier, but it is.

gtyras2mrs 8y ago
I don’t use the directory myself - but plenty of programs dump data into it. I held off updating because I didn’t want Windows wiping out all my game saves for example.

makecheck 8y ago

Recursive delete has always been a misfeature of computing, out of a mistaken entitlement to convenience when you are performing a fundamentally risky operation on a target you can never know the state of. At best, it is redundant with a recursive search feature that chooses “delete” as the operation. And if you want “do something else then delete”, you can no longer call a recursive-delete command anyway so why not just learn how to enumerate files first and give your system a fighting chance to audit first? Disk cleanup code should always create lists of known target files, attempt to delete only that list of files, then do the platform equivalent of “rmdir” at the end to attempt to remove the directory. If that fails, congratulations: your ass was saved by not deleting something you didn’t know was there.

drbawb 8y ago

Tangential to this when are operating systems going to ship w/ CoW filesystems by default? Accidental deletion of critical directories has been a solved problem for years now. I take instant snapshots of my home directory on ZFS every hour, my boot environment is snapshotted before every update. You could literally remove my entire root directory and at worst you've minorly inconvenienced me: I now have to boot from a USB drive and run `zfs rollback` to the most recent snapshot. I'd be impervious to most ransomware as well: my home directory is filled w/ garbage now? Good thing it can't encrypt my read only snapshots, even with root access. Oh and I can serialize those snapshots across the network at the block level before I nuke the infected machine. Of course humanity will always invent a bigger idiot, so it's possible a virus could gain root & exec some dangerous ZFS commands, or it's possible some MSFT employee could pass the `-r` flag and recursively delete a dataset & its snapshots in their post-update script. Plus let's not forget that no filesystem in the world will stop you from just zero-filling the drive. Still it's easy for me to imagine a world where I'm completely impervious from ransomware: by way of only being able to delete critical snapshots when a hardware key is present or when my TPM is unlocked. On the whole it seems to me CoW filesystems are a major step forward in safe-guarding users from accidental deletions. At a minimum they have other benefits (serialized incremental send streams, block level compression & dedup, etc.) that make backups easier to manage. -- Yet I still can't boot from ReFS on Windows.

rbanffy 8y ago
Last time Microsoft decided to replace NTFS with something modern, they took about 15 years to give up. If they start now, we can expect them to give up roughly in 2033.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  They tried radical, that's why it was slow and sadly painful. Now implementing CoW ideas is at MS reach easily and would bring commercial value easily, so it could go very differently.
- rleigh 8y ago
  ZFS has now been ported to Windows. With some testing and polishing, maybe it will be something they could adopt in the future (I know, wishful thinking, but the technology is there).

rbanffy 8y ago

It's bugs, all the way down.

NVRM 8y ago

This should be a huge warning.