Windows 8 Protogon File System in Action

Early development milestones of Windows 8 revealed that the next major iteration of the Windows client could ship with a new file system option in addition to File Allocation Table (FAT), FAT32 and NTFS (New Technology File System).

Unofficial testing of leaked Windows 8 copies have revealed references to the Protogon file system, a new addition to Windows that Microsoft has yet to confirm.

Some testers playing around with Windows 8 Build 7955 reportedly managed to use Protogon in order to format drives and create new partitions.

Check out the images included with this article in order to get an idea of the process that goes into creating a new Protogon volume in Windows 8.

Apparently, all that testers need do is fire up Command Prompt, they should make sure and run it with administrator privileges, enter the following command: format DriveLetter: /FS:protogon /Q and hit enter.

DriveLetter should be replaced with the actual drive letter for the partition or drive that is being formatted with Protogon.

As some Softpedia readers will be able to tell, /Q is designed to allow the quick version of the Protogon formatting. Otherwise, according to testers that tried it using USB keys, the process can take quite a long time.

Users are advised that Protogon, just as the rest of Windows 8, is very much still a work in progress. This means that it’s not exactly ready for everyday use, nor is it intended for production environments. Early adopters should stick to test it and nothing more.

In fact, as it completes the Protogon formatting, Windows 8 provides the following warning message: "Please be advised that the underlying format may be incompatible with near-future versions."

Testers that already created Protogon volumes reveal that the partitions and drives with the new file system appear to not only be faster compared to when formatted with NTFS, but also allow the usage of more space.

At the same time, it’s clear that Protogon is still very early on in the development process, since not all Windows 8 components play nice with the file system, save for Disk Management and Windows Explorer, and only to a certain extent. (Read additional details on Protogon here)