Microsoft today released the beta version of WinFS (Windows File System). WinFS, which was originally scheduled to be released with Windows Longhorn (Vista) was pulled from the forthcoming release last year.

Microsoft is adding support for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for WinFS. Indeed, Beta 1 only works on XP. When installed, you see a new top-level object in My Computer called WinFS Stores. Inside of this storage area, which can be accessed by any existing Windows application as if it were the native file system, you can create and organize individual data stores.[via]