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What tools, akin to Treesize Free (and others of that ilk) are there that are hard-link aware? Either my google-fu is failing, or there aren't that many out there as I haven't yet found one.

I've already seen this question and this question that already tell me that certain tools aren't hard-link aware, but they don't suggest alternatives that are aware. There's also this question that only has one accepted answer which suggests sysinternal's du, but interested to know what others (if any) are out there

(It's entirely possible that this question may be seen as a dupe of that I've linked to above, but I want to solicit new opinion given that one is dated 2010. Also I don't know how much interest a question that already has an accepted answer will garner in terms of new knowledge when the rep's not up for grabs ;-) ).

Community
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Callie J
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2 Answers2

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If there is a tool out there that displays a tree and is hardlink aware, it will be imperfect.

Hardlinks allow files to live in more than one folder. But in a hierarchy tree diagram that most of these utilities use, a file cannot live in more than one branch. For example, many of the included games live under Program Files and Winsxs. So is a tree diagram to place the file under the Windows branch or the Program Files branch??

The bottom line is that folder sizes are an imperfect abstraction. Since files don't technically live in folders, you can't say a folder has a certain "size".

If you are pruning your harddrive, you should just focus on which files are the culprit, not which folders.

surfasb
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Junction Link Magic is a tool I used to tell me where the links are on the hard drive. It only shows folder links though.

The URL is as below: http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm

Douglas
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