Editing NTFS (section)

=== Transactions ===
As of Windows Vista, applications can use [[Transactional NTFS]] (TxF) to group multiple changes to files together into a single transaction. The transaction will guarantee that either all of the changes happen, or none of them do, and that no application outside the transaction will see the changes until they are committed.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/about-transactional-ntfs|title=About Transactional NTFS|website=[[Microsoft Learn]]|date=7 January 2021 |publisher=[[Microsoft]]|access-date=2025-01-25}}</ref>

It uses similar techniques as those used for Volume Shadow Copies (i.e. copy-on-write) to ensure that overwritten data can be safely rolled back, and a [[Common Log File System|CLFS]] log to mark the transactions that have still not been committed, or those that have been committed but still not fully applied (in case of system crash during a commit by one of the participants).

Transactional NTFS does not restrict transactions to just the local NTFS volume, but also includes other transactional data or operations in other locations such as data stored in separate volumes, the local registry, or SQL databases, or the current states of system services or remote services. These transactions are coordinated network-wide with all participants using a specific service, the [[Distributed Transaction Coordinator|DTC]], to ensure that all participants will receive same commit state, and to transport the changes that have been validated by any participant (so that the others can invalidate their local caches for old data or rollback their ongoing uncommitted changes). Transactional NTFS allows, for example, the creation of network-wide consistent distributed file systems, including with their local live or offline caches.

Microsoft now advises against using TxF: "Microsoft strongly recommends developers utilize alternative means" since "TxF may not be available in future versions of Microsoft Windows".<ref name=NTFS-TxF>{{cite web |title=Transactional NTFS (TxF)|url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/transactional-ntfs-portal|website=[[Microsoft Learn]]|date=20 July 2022 |publisher=[[Microsoft]]|access-date=12 August 2023|ref=42}}</ref>