Transactional NTFS Functions for Vista

[Sokko]

Windows Vista introduces a new way of handling file operations called Transactional NTFS, or TxF for short (MSDN link). Basically, you create what's called a transaction, and use it to tell Windows what you intend to do with some files. None of the changes are made until you commit the transaction, at which point everything you specified earlier happens in one big whack. Alternatively, if you find out in the middle of your file manipulation that you can't do something you wanted, you can roll back the transaction, and none of your changes actually happen.

Unfortunately, only Windows Vista is capable of using these functions, which means they're just a curiosity until Vista reaches critical mass (though they might be useful for administering a Vista-only corporate environment). Still, I was bored this afternoon, and the DLL calls are fairly straightforward, so I wrote some AutoIt functions to deal with transactions. With these you can create, commit, and roll back transactions, and within a transaction you can move/copy/delete files and move/create/delete directories (attempting to copy a whole directory doesn't work for some reason). No support for creating and writing to files yet, though it's technically possible.

Documentation is included in the AU3, along with some common error codes. If you have access to a Vista machine, go ahead and test out some transactions!

txf.au3

Edited April 23, 2007 by Sokko