Write Filters – share your experience with us

I'm a program Manager with the Windows Embedded Standard team working on the write filters – Enhanced Write Filter (EWF), File Based Write Filter (FBWF), and Registry Filter. I have been with Microsoft for almost 9 years, but just joined the Embedded team last year to work on the next version of Embedded systems based on Windows 7 codename 'Quebec'.

Write filters are part of the Embedded Enabling Features (EEFs) that enable the Embedded Windows community to protect their disks. They bring a wide variety of benefits including system resilience and reliability, stateless device operation, fast reboot capabilities with Hibernate Once Resume Many (HORM), and reducing wear on flash devices. The Disk protection in Windows Embedded Standard more than just a useful feature blog provides an overview of the write filters and corresponding benefits. Additionally, the write filters provide configuration and management utilities both at image creation and runtime. The Managing Disk Protection blog provides an overview for both configuration and runtime management. On the other hand, the great benefits of these features sometimes come at a cost, as they may interfere with the functionality of some other feature in the system especially those that require persistent write to the disk; servicing is a classical example as you currently cannot service a system that is protected by a write filter, unless you turn off the filter before servicing then turn it on again after you are done.

That said, we want to hear back from you about your experience, scenarios, pain points, and suggestions for the write filters. Your feedback is essential to direct our design more towards your scenarios and adapt our development to fulfill your requirements. Although I can't commit to accommodating all suggestions, issues and/or problems in our upcoming release, I'll make sure that this feedback becomes part of our core requirements and design considerations for subsequent releases.

Thank you for reading my first posting and I’m looking forward to having useful postings and productive discussions on this blog.

- Abdelkader