BPbpye·Jul 8, 2026
I guess you can try Windows next - https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs
In How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)openzfsonwindows
openzfs
C2022–2026
openzfsonwindows / openzfs
openzfs
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD
10Distinct people
10Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
822GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
This is really cool and speaks to the modularity of the Windows file system stack. I love projects that customize Windows (working against its closed-source nature). There’s an…
EvanAnderson used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-04-28 03:17:49 UTC to 2026-07-08 05:30:08 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesGood question. I don't know about other microkernels, but NetBSD is a small kernel that supports ZFS. The support has been there since the 4.0.5 and 5.3[0], possibly earlier too. I'm not adept at navigating the mailing lists here, but I imagine a good place to learn about the challenges of porting ZFS to a smaller kernel would be the NetBSD and ZFS lists from that era (2008-2009). What NetBSD does today is use a 'zfs' modlue that depends on a 'solaris' kernel modile. The dependency of Solaris primitives is probably one of the major challenges with porting ZFS to any kernel. FWIW, somehow a ZFS port for the "hybrid" kernel in Windows also exists[1].
[0] https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/zfs-compatibility/
[1] https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs
In RedoxFS is the default filesystem of Redox OS, inspired by ZFSThere is occasional talk of moving the Windows implementation of OpenZFS (https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs/releases) into an officially supported tier, though that will probably come after the MacOS version (https://github.com/openzfsonosx) is officially supported.
In ZFS 2.3.0 released with ZFS raidz expansionWhat do you mean by a ZFS compatibility layer? There is a Windows port:
https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs
Note that it is a beta.
In ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansionHeads up, installing both WinBTRFS and OpenZFS on Windows may have problems:
"Win OpenZFS driver and WinBtrfs driver dont play well with each other"
https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs/issues/364
In WinBtrfs – an open-source btrfs driver for WindowsExists! [1]
ZFS seems to be the most cross-platform of the modern filesystems. Although there's a Paragon driver for APFS for Windows and a FOSS driver for native Linux APFS as well as one for FUSE.
Personally, I keep track of bcachefs which got merged in Linux 6.7. But it won't be cross-platform.
[1] https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs
[2] https://bcachefs.org
In WinBtrfs – an open-source btrfs driver for WindowsI tried it a few months ago and ReFS ate my data. No indication of why in event logs or SMART data. It had IsPowerProtected set because I have a UPS and I had a unclean restart, I would expect it to lose data, but not to corrupt the filesystem metadata. I had a backup of the data but wanted some recent changes. Refsutil (the official Microsoft tool) didn't help because it has not been updated for the newest ReFS version. I couldn't read most files because I had integrity enable and files failed the check. Hetman's Data Recovery was able to recover most of the data. In later testing I found out that IsPowerProtected is just very unsafe. I have since put some time into testing and sometimes fixing https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs , it is not ready for use yet, but it is making great progress.
In OpenZFS 2.2: Block Cloning, Linux Containers, BLAKE3This is really cool and speaks to the modularity of the Windows file system stack. I love projects that customize Windows (working against its closed-source nature).
There’s an OpenZFS port to Windows[0]. I wonder if my hopes of having ZFS on Windows (including the boot drive, because I would love to be able to snapshot and rollback) would actually be possible.
[0] https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs
In Windows on BtrfsThat's awesome. I never expected Windows could integrate with zfs like that.
Speaking of, I always forget this exists too:
https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs/
In Interactive, file-level Time Machine-like tool for ZFS