REFS with Veaam Agent Recovery

[mobamoba]

I searched the forum but couldn't really find an answer for my particular case. Veeam Agent is backing up various computers to a Server 2016 REFS drive - a few Win10 Pro computers, a Server 2012 computer, etc.. VAW Recovery is installed to a USB flash drive.

If I needed to do a restore, would the backup drive be readable by VAW? I know the drive won't be readable to the other computers (actually, I'm not sure if Win10 Pro can read the most recent version of a REFS drive or not), but I wanted to make sure that the VAW Recovery would be able to restore from that drive if necessary. Thanks.

[Technogod]

From my experience, no it would not. That is why I switched back to NTFS.

[mobamoba]

Is this something you know for a fact, that Veeam Recovery can't read REFS, or is it just speculation? Thanks.

[Dima P.]

Hi mobamoba,

Veeam Agent for Windows can protect REFS volumes but it’s recommended to use CBT driver in such case. Without CBT driver incremental backups of the REFS volume will take a lot of time.

[mobamoba]

Thanks but just to confirm: booting to Veeam Recovery USB will allow me to read REFS?

[Technogod]

No, I could not read REFS.

[Dima P.]

Wanted to clarify ReFS and Veeam RE problem. Restore from backups on ReFS volume is possible but Recovery Media should contain the ReFS components to properly work with ReFS volume. These components version should be identical to the host with ReFS volume. In case ReFS is a Veeam B&R repository, that should work out of the box.

To cut the long story short, if you want to restore from the backup file on pure (non Veeam B&R repository) ReFS volume you should create a Recovery Media from the host where ReFS is installed.