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How to make hard links in Windows


manpe

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A hard link is a directory reference, or pointer, to a file on a storage volume. The name associated with the file is a label stored in a directory structure that refers the operating system to the file data. As such, more than one name can be associated with the same file. When accessed through different names, any changes made will affect the same file data.

PS this is not a shortcut or a copy. Every hard link you create acts like an original file. You can edit one of them and all of the other hard link files will be edited also.

This simple scheme explains it the best:

314px-Hard_Link_Illustration.svg.png

Open Run -> cmd type "mklink /H" or "fsutil hardlink create" and follow the instructions it gives to make a hard link. You can make as many as you want.

mklink /H command works on Windows NT 6.0 or later systems (Vista, 7)

fsutil hardlink command works on Windows Vista, 7, XP and 2000.

Source: Wikipedia

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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365006%28VS.85%29.aspx ;)

junctions are for dirs, hard links for files..

however, better be careful with them.. i sometime had a steam game launcher that automatically created junction of my steamapps folder in its own folder.. when i deleted the launcher's folder, my original steamapps folder was also nuked..

bam! was nice to redownload gigabytes worth of GCFs as I couldn't recover all of them completely.. :frusty:

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