osw-fs-windows

August 23, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Warning

Archived. This is a legacy dataset from a previous generation of OSWatcher.

It was produced by the original OSWatcher (Wenzel/oswatcher, 2016-2020), which captured filesystems directly into a git repository. That approach has been superseded: OSWatcher now captures into a Neo4j graph via neogit.

Start here instead: OSWatcher/oswatcher.

This repository is kept for historical reference only. It is not maintained, not extended, and not part of the current toolchain.

Known limitations

If you use this data anyway, be aware of two defects that affect the examples below.

  • All files are empty. Every path is a zero-byte blob: the repository records which files existed, never their contents or hashes. Because all blobs are byte-identical, git's rename detection pairs unrelated additions and deletions, so --diff-filter=A and --diff-filter=D under-report badly. Pass --no-renames to get true counts:

    # Windows XP SP3 -> Windows 10 1507
git diff --diff-filter=D --name-only              <ref1>..<ref2> | wc -l   # 0      (wrong)
git diff --no-renames --diff-filter=D --name-only <ref1>..<ref2> | wc -l   # 22678  (correct)

  • There are no tags. Releases are delimited by paired [RM] / [ADD] commits, so a naive two-commit range straddles a removal and reports tens of thousands of phantom deletions. Diff the [ADD] commit of one release against the [ADD] commit of another.

Current alternatives

Instead of this repoUse
Per-file hashes and binary security propertieswindows-desktop
Querying OS history properlyOSWatcher/oswatcher
Building your own corpusosw-builder

Coverage here stops at Windows 10 20H1 (2004, 19041.264), captured 2021. Nothing later exists in this dataset.

Filesystems available

  • win98
    • First Edition
    • Second Edition
  • Windows XP
    • build 2600
    • Service Pack 1
    • Service Pack 2
    • Service Pack 3
  • Windows 10
    • Threshold 1 - 1507 (10240.16384)
    • Threshold 2 - 1511
      • November 2015 (10586.0)
      • February 2016 (10586.104)
      • April 2016 (10586.164)
    • Redstone 1 - 1603 (14393.0)
    • Redstone 2 - 1703 (15063.0)
    • Redstone 3 - 1709 (16299.15)
    • Redstone 4 - 1803 (17134.1)
    • Redstone 5 - 1809
      • September 2018 (17763.1)
      • October 2018 (17763.107)
      • March 2019 (17763.379)
    • 19H1 - 1903
      • 18362.30
      • 18362.356
    • 19H2 - 1909 (18363.418)
    • 20H1 - 2004 (19041.264)