
Modifications for the file of either the target or the links automatically propagate to all other things.Ī junction is actually a hard link for directories but a little different to hard link that you are able to produce junctions that span several partitions. Importantly if either the hard link or the target are deleted the other links retain the data. So 3 hard links that mirrored a 2 GB file would in total only use 2 GB around the partition instead of 6 GB. It doesn’t use any disk space and all programs recognise each the link and also the target.Ī symbolic link can point to any file or folder either locally around the computer or via network using SMB path.Ī hard link is is actually a tiny different and may not be used over multiple partitions which means you’ll be able to not have a link on drive C: pointing to a file on drive D.Ī file hard link points to and duplicates a target as a mirrored copy however the copy will not use any additional space on the hark drive. Shortcuts usually do not only use disk space, they also break and linger behind right after the target has been deleted, renamed or moved.Ī symbolic is like a shortcut but as a file it really is registered for the hard drive partition. It is an antiquated pointing system from the Windows 95 era that many applications do not recognise. Junction Link Magic: Freeware GUI lets you create junction points with Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.ĭfference between a shortcut, a symbolic link and a hard linkĪ shortcut is actually a file that points to an additional file.Mark Russinovich at Windows Sysinternals released his own junction tool called junction which provided more complete functionality.



Unfortunately each revision of Windows until Windows7/8 has used a different method of implementing these pointers. Junction points are a type of NTFS reparse point they can only link to directories on a local volume junction points to remote shares are unsupported. The Windows NTFS v3.0 file system has supported some form of file and directory pointing, call NTFS junction point since Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5.0).
