Dev Drive vs NTFS vs ReFS | Windows 11 Setup, Requirements and Benchmark

Published 13/11/2025

Description

Dev Drive vs NTFS vs ReFS benchmark on Windows 11, including setup, requirements, and real developer workload comparisons. Microsoft describes Dev Drive as a storage volume based on ReFS that is designed to improve performance for key developer workloads. In this video, I compare NTFS, ReFS with Dev Drive, and ReFS without Dev Drive by creating the volumes, reviewing setup requirements, and testing them with file operations, .NET workflows, and Git tasks. Microsoft’s Dev Drive documentation says Dev Drive setup on Windows 11 requires build 10.0.22621.2338 or later, at least 8 GB of memory with 16 GB recommended, a minimum of 50 GB of free disk space, and local administrator permissions. 0:00 - Introduction 0:09 - Description 2:24 - NTFS 4:15 - Create Dev Drive 8:26 - Performance Copy 12:24 - Performance Compress 13:22 - Performance Build 15:16 - Performance Restore 15:46 - Performance Test 16:33 - Performance Git 17:08 - Performance Results 17:50 - Visual Differences 19:10 - Conclusion This walkthrough is useful if you want to know whether Dev Drive is worth using for coding, package restore, build output, and repository-heavy workflows on Windows 11. Microsoft also notes that Dev Drives are available on all Windows SKU versions, which makes the setup story broader than many people assume. A key part of the comparison is that Microsoft Defender performance mode runs only on Dev Drive and is intended to reduce the impact of antivirus scanning for files stored there. Microsoft explains that trusted Dev Drive volumes use an asynchronous performance mode that defers scans until after the file open operation completes, which is one of the reasons Dev Drive can behave differently from NTFS or ordinary volumes in developer scenarios. #DevDrive #ReFS #NTFS Follow me on X: https://l.samayas.eu/jo3eaYEf3E?P=YT&V=31 Sample Code Nuget Cache Cleanup script: https://l.samayas.eu/bqokD5Hn8u?P=YT&V=31 Buy me a Coffee: https://l.samayas.eu/jX6xL7EWhd?P=YT&V=31 Studio Equip