The Mklink command for Vista and above can create a link to a folder (it feels like a map of a folder). This link is transparent to the application because it implements the folder link from the bottom.
(the corresponding function of Windows 2000,xp,server 2003 is linkd, just say Mklink)
For example, I have a folder called C:\Program Files, but the C disk space is not much, you want to transfer some applications to the D drive, but the direct cut in the past certainly does not work, the application will be error, so first the C:\Program Files folder to move (cut) to D disk, To execute the command again:
" C:\Program Files " " D:\Program Files "
So the C drive below will be more than a folder with a shortcut icon, the full name is "C:\Program Files", double-click into actually transferred to the D:\Program Files.
and C:\Program files This folder is transparent to the application, that is, in addition to Windows itself, the application does not know that C:\Program files are actually transferred to the D drive, but also when they are still in the C drive. This will not affect the original C:\Program files under the use of the application.
1, the links established above are soft links (/j), as well as symbolic links (/d) and hard links to files (/h).
Symbolic links and soft links are roughly the same, except that soft links are absolute path links, while symbolic links allow links to relative paths.
For example, to create c:\data\tmp symbolic link c:\1 and soft link c:\2 respectively, then c:\1 points to the subfolder under the Data folder under the same folder TMP, and c:\2 points to the absolute path of c:\data\tmp. The effect is that if you move the c:\1 and c:\2 folders to the D drive, the d:\1 link fails, and the d:\2 is still valid.
A hard link to a file is a link to a file creation, such as creating a link to c:\data\1.txt c:\data\2.txt, then these two files are two equivalent aliases for the same file, equivalent to two pointers to the same hard disk storage space. Deleting any of these does not affect the other file. But the limit is that such links cannot span partitions.
2, soft links and symbolic links cannot span disks.
3, this feature must be available on the NTFS file system.
Folder link functionality under Windows system MKLINK/LINKD