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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  1. Keilaron Technullkitsune’s avatar

    Keilaron Technullkitsune on 25 November, 2006 at 17:19

    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.

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  2. Keilaron Technullkitsune’s avatar

    Keilaron Technullkitsune on 25 November, 2006 at 17:25

    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.

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