Can I use the new ReFS file system on Windows 8?

Microsoft is planning to upgrade ReFS to be capable of being a boot volume, but no time span has been given yet.

With this in mind, we will implement ReFS in a staged evolution of the feature: first as a storage system for Windows Server, then as storage for clients, and then ultimately as a boot volume. This is the same approach we have used with new file systems in the past.

In its current iteration, it is not an upgrade to NTFS.

According to this article by Denny Cherry:

The NTFS features we have chosen to not support in ReFS are: named streams, object IDs, short names, compression, file level encryption (EFS), user data transactions, sparse, hard-links, extended attributes, and quotas.

In my mind, this is a significant list of reasons why you shouldn't even consider ReFS for the immediate future.

If this changes and they support those features, then I may consider changing my mind. But it's a storage-first model at the moment, and I wouldn't touch it for a desktop environment.

With Windows 8.1 it is possible to enable system-wide support for ReFS (including disk manager and format tool) with the following registry key. This will allow you to format exsisting partitions to ReFS.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT] “AllowRefsFormatOverNonmirrorVolume”=dword:00000001

Source : My blog