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Copy to another NTFS disk and preserve hard links


I have to copy directory structure from one local NTFS disk to another (Windows 7+) and preserve hard links that exist within this directory structure.


An acceptable solution would be to replace hard links with (relative) symbolic links before copy, but I'm not sure if it is practicable either.


What are the options here?



Answer



Tool To Copy Hard Links Across Separate Disk Partitions


LN - Command Line Hardlinks


Command: ln --copy x:\dir\dir2 y:\dir\newdir



In the above example the directories and files below x:\dir\dir2 are copied to y:\dir\newdir, and all hardlinks/junctions/symbolic links within x:\dir\dir2 are copied/tied to their new locations under y:\dir\newdir.



Resource: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/ln/ln.html


Download: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/ln/ln.html#contact


Note: It appears you just download this software for your CPU architecture from the ZIP file, as well as the vcredist (Visual C++ Redistributable) and install it. Then just extract the files and folders from the ZIP file to a new folder somewhere (.e.g C:\Temp). In command line, just go to that [directory] folder and then run the needed commands for your drive locations as the above example shows. Running ln --help shows help detail but the above command example is supposed to copy the hard links per the documentation.



Link Shell Extension


Resource: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html


Download: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html#contact


Sections or Functions of Interest with this Software



  • Smart Mirror

  • Clone

  • Smart Copy



ln - Command Line Hardlinks - Download Screen Shot enter image description here


Link Shell Extension - Download Screen Shot enter image description here



INTERESTING NOTES


It appears hard links are locked to the same disk partition for their file pointers, etc. and cannot be used across multiple partitions. Also, hard links on NTFS partitions are part of the Master File Table records (or attributes for the counts at least) so copying these to an existing disk that has it's own MFT would seem like a problem if you don't clone byte-for-byte at the partition level at least.


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