Windows 2000 and higher supports symbolic links and junction points. The problem is that you can only manage them, but you can’t create junctions points in Windows without some add-ons.
About Symbolic Links
Creating Junction Points
Download Junction v1.05 for Windows
1. Step Copy it somewhere e.g. to \windows\system32\
2. Step You can then create junction points via the command line:
CD: C:\Windows\system32\
junction.exe “c:\new folder” “d:\path\real folder”
3. Step Use this syntax to create your junction points:
junction.exe Destination Source – this is the abstract syntax where the Destination is the new folder and Source the actual folder
Removing Junction Points:
In order to remove any junction points you have already created you need to use the d flag. Simply deleting the junction point may result in data loss of the actual files you were linking too. This is also the case on Linux machines but depends on how you created the link. Hard links
junction.exe -d “c:\new folder”
you can’t create junctions points in Windows 7 without some add-ons.
This is NOT true. It was even possible in XP (wikipedia says you needed the resource kits to use the linkd command).
For Vista/Win7, search for mklink (specifically mklink /J for junction).
For XP, this is the preferred method however.
Honestly, Microsoft makes it a bit too confusing about when you need a:
soft link
hard link
junction point
here’s one for the specialists:
you can even create *directory* junction points without mklink!!
But without the tool, it will be restricted to whole drives.
Example:
You want to get rid of the obsolete drive-letter system and thus you’ve created a directory called C:\Mounts.
Now you don’t want to call your D drive by D:\ anymore but by C:\Mounts\Ddrv. That makes sense because if you get another primary partition in between, by default, new letter became D:\, and “old” D:\ would get moved to E:\. So either you want to use some ancient tools that move D:\ to E:\ (yes I’ve used them often too, but 15 years ago! =p) or go the modern way!
{1} Create a directory “Ddrv” in your C:\Mounts
{2} Now right-click on the “” icon you presumedly have on your desktop and say “Manage”, then
{3} “Disk Management”
Your drives and partitions created on them will show up.
{4} Right-click on one of your NTFS partitions, and choose…
{5} “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”
{6} Now say “Add -> Mount in the following NTFS folder…”
{7} Specify your previously created C:\Mounts\Ddrv
AND VOILA, what you’ve just created is a shiny directory junction!!
I was fortunate enough to boot up with drives C and D as they should be. I had started installing software and some had links in them. Using robocopy /mir /xj resolved that. What was interesting is that until I was certain it was going to work correctly, I renamed the original folder on C to C:\Users_DriveC. When I restarted into Windows 8, both Explorer and Directory Opus (great program if you have to manage many files) shows C:\Users as a symbolic link and a folder C:\Users (Directory Opus could only estimate a size for that folder for some reason and it was much larger than it should have been) and it didn’t reflect C:\Users_DriveC. I opened up a command prompt and dir C:\ /ad showed the folders properly. I then removed the directory C:\Users_DriveC and low and behold the extra, unlinked C:\Users went away.
So the short story for me was to use robocopy /mir /xj instead of xcopy you do need to remove the original C:\Users folder.
One peculiar thing I noticed is that my library reflects as C:\Users but (thankfully), copying files there actually stores them on D:\Users. This can be a bit confusing for those of us that delve into the file system but it did work with the above notes for me.
Thank you for this great method!
Thanks for the followup on this George, I think others will find it helpful. Cheers
Disk Management is a great way to do that , but I’m using Windows 10 Tech Preview and this was broken with the first build. However, MKLINK works just fine to create a link from a folder to an SD card (especially for Dropbox). There was something about security settings that they just broke…… (this is the first build, so it is to be expected)