Use “Link Shell Extension” to create clones of your files and folders on a single drive
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Description: On the NTFS file system, freeware program “Link Shell Extension” provides you with the ability to create clones (called hard links) of your files and folders straight from the context menu.
Clones, if you’re wondering, are not copies of a file or shortcuts.
Cloned files look like normal files (except for a little inverted blue arrow) and what they are are multiple instances of a file that point to the same exact data. So, for example, you can have a cloned file reside on your desktop as well as in another directory on the same drive (or even in the same directory under a different name), but in reality there is only a single copy on your drive, with two files pointing to it. Opening any one of those two clones will access the same data, so that if you save a change to the file on your desktop for example it will be reflected in the other one as well. The process of creating these clones is referred to as hardlinking.
How this can be useful: hardlinking can be useful whenever your primary method for organizing your files is within a folder structure. As an example, you might organize your MP3s such that each folder represents an album and contains the constituent song files. But let’s say that you also want to have a “best of” folder that contains your favorite songs; instead of making copies of the MP3s and putting them in the ’best of’ folder (or using shortcuts that need to be maintained and might not be recognized by media players) you can use hardlinked clones such that any single song in the “best of” folder will actually exist in both the “album” and “best of” folders at once. This way your songs take up hard drive space only once, and any change you might make to the tags/metadata of one file will be instantly the case for the other (because they in fact the same file), instead of having to be performed twice.
How to perform hardlinking using “Link Shell Extension”; after installing “Link Shell Extension”, you can create hardlinks as follows:
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Posted December 17, 2007
Comments(11)
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There is a certain category of item, mostly personal electronics stuff, that although in theory I would love to own, in practice, when it really comes down to it, I will opt against parting with the money. Examples of this are: the Playstation 3 (would love to have, but will simply not buy), a really nice gaming laptop, the Nintendo WII, a color laser printer, a large flatscreen TV, those nice $200 noise-cancelling headphones that they sell at the Apple store (forgot the brand — Bose? Harman Kardon?).

Rating: 5
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