hard what?

Technical Support

hard what?

tonypags314 12-21-2005, 17:32

the new version will include shortcut and hardlink creation to replace deleted files. GREAT! what the eff is a hardlink? i googled it and got a bunch of Unix-related info. one microsoft link explains what it is... kind of. it gave me sample syntax:

fsutil hardlink create NewFilename ExistingFilename

what do these options refer to?

How do you go about creating hard links manually in windows xp? server 2000? server 2003?

is there a GUI interface? or cmd only.

Re: hard what?

alan 12-22-2005, 3:32

MS's definition of hard link: "A hard link is an NTFS-based link to a given file. When you create a hard link to a file on an NTFS volume, NTFS adds a directory entry for the hard link without duplicating the original file." Unlike shortcut, when file moved /deleted, hard link still work. Hard links are available on NTFS volumes, so you can use in Windows ME, 2000, XP and 2003.

Hard link can be useful to "remove" duplicate system files e.g. DLL safely as the same time recover valuabel disk space.

We should make NoClone to replace duplicates with hard link a automatic process.

As recommended by a NoClone user, you can use these shell extension hard link tool beside the command-line tool:

http://www.elsdoerfer.info/ntfslink/

http://hermann.schinagl.tripod.com/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

NoClone Author
Reasonable Software House

Re: hard what?

alan 06-30-2006, 13:12

Replace by NTFS link is not ready for testing:

http://support.reasonablesw.com/forums/256/ShowPost.aspx

NoClone Author
Reasonable Software House

Re: hard what?

piercepresley 03-15-2007, 19:03
While I think I get hard links, I don't understand how the linked file can be deleted (as opposed to put into the recycle bin) and still work.

Re: hard what?

lazzeroooni 04-14-2007, 20:36
I don't think you quite get the idea, as I understand it. If you use Windows, think of the link as a shortcut - you can replace duplicates of a file with shortcuts pointing to the single remaining instance of it. In the case of large files this could save a good deal of space.

Without knowing more details about it, the danger would perhaps be removing the application that installed the single file you're linking to, making the remaining hard links useless. Unless, obviously, the system is such that it recognizes the existence of hard links pointing to that file, and replaces one of them with the file itself. Otherwise you'd need to be very careful in replacing duplicate files with hard links to ensure you don't encounter that situation.

To answer your question, you're right, you can't replace every instance of a file with hard links - they would have nothing to point to. You would always need to keep one copy of the file.

If you happen to have a few applications using (locally) the same data file, you could save space on the disk and keep the functionality of all the programs. In practice it probably doesn't happen all that often for most people.

Re: hard what?

kb9nvh 05-08-2007, 14:09

Ok, now i've used my version of NOclone to replace all duplicate files with hardlinks. my understanding is that each hardlink is equal in every way to any other. If you delete one hard link the file remains until the last hardlink is deleted.

I would like to be able to go into a subdirectory now and delete all the hardlinks there unless its the last and only hardlink. In that case I want it to remain. Is there a way to do this in noclone or is the functinality something that might be easy to implement?

thanks

Re: hard what?

Nate_11 09-08-2008, 20:24
Hi,

I am trying out NoClone and the main feature I am interested in is the "replace with hard link feature." I have tried this feature and these are my results: I run the save space hard link feature, the program tells me the duplicate files have been replaced with hard links successfully. The problem is that I do not see any results in terms of drive space saved. The folders that I thought I was eliminating duplicates from are still the same size in "properties" as they were before running this hard link routine. Is this a common result? Is there actually space saved but the hard link fools properties? Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

Re: hard what?

Stargazer 01-16-2010, 8:56
Hi kb9nvh,

Did you ever get a reply to this.

I have just bought noclone 2010 and I particularly like the Hard Link feature. When I've finished Saving Space on my external USB hard drives I'm going to have thousands of hard links.

We need an easy way of managing our hard links.

When you view Windows Explorer it gives no hint that Hard Links even exist. It is understandable because every file shown in Windows Explorer is a hard link in it's own right.

I'm assuming Noclone uses the Msoft fsutil hardlink command. Given that fsutil has been around a while I was surprised when I Googled it that the topic of 'hard link management' was not a common topic and that I could not see any 'hard link management' utilities.

For info the following link gives insight into fsutil and a neat definition of what hard links are http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil.mspx?mfr=true. The definition says, "http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil.mspx?mfr=true"

Re: hard what?

Stargazer 01-16-2010, 9:28
Don't worry, I've just re-read the trail and alan' post in 2005 answers it already by pointing us to acouple of Shgells.

"As recommended by a NoClone user, you can use these shell extension hard link tool beside the command-line tool:

http://www.elsdoerfer.info/ntfslink/

http://hermann.schinagl.tripod.com/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html
"

I'm going to try the latter.