Micronerdery and NTFS Junctions

5 October, 2006 in Uncategorized by Justin | 2 comments

So, here it is, about six in the morning, and I was asking myself, “Wasn’t there a way to create symlinks on Windows?”

I should be well asleep by now, but I’m sitting up, digging through Google to find an answer.
Surprisingly, there is an option to create the equivalent of a symbolic link on Windows, but it normally comes in a developer kit that you must purchase from Microsoft.

Well, that sucks.

So, I keep looking through results, and I found out that there is a freeware tool written that will make [tag]NTFS Junction[/tag] points, which are the Windows equivalent of [tag]symlinks[/tag] ([tag]symbolic links[/tag]).

Sure, the only caveat is, you’ll have to have an NTFS-formatted drive to which you can target your junction, but if you’re using Win2000 or WinXP, you should have at least one. :)

Now to go to bed. I’m starting to pass out here.

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25 November, 2006 at 17:19

Keilaron Technullkitsune

Keilaron Technullkitsune’s avatar

Oh, sweet. The closest to symlink behaviour that I’ve seen in Windows so far is the odd link in my start menu to my Music folder: In my start menu (somewhere on J), I can explore my music folder (on F) as though it were really in the start menu. Should I double-click on that folder instead, I’ll be given an explorer window of that folder - but hitting backspace (down) brings me back to my start menu.
If I look at it by command line, though, all I see is a desktop.ini file (again!) and a target.lnk (which is just a regular shortcut) file.

25 November, 2006 at 17:25

Keilaron Technullkitsune

Keilaron Technullkitsune’s avatar

Oh, and a word of caution:
Deleting a symlink via anything other than Junction causes the actual file(s) and folder(s) to be deleted, with the exception of the symlinked folder itself:
F:\test\somefile.txt
F:\test\anotherfile.txt
F:\test\a_picture.jpg
Link F:\symlink to F:\test, then delete F:\symlink via, say, explorer. Everything will be removed except for F:\test itself. Everything within will be gone.