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windowsntfsdata-synchronization

How to synchronize source and destination folders when destination contains only NTFS hard links


We have source "S" folder, destination "D" and Original "O".

D is a copy of O using NTFS hard link for all files.

Now we need to synchronize S and D and copy only changed files from S to D.

Robocopy.exe does that, however it overwrites files and as a result files are changed in both D and O, but we want files in O to remain intact, no matter what.

To correctly update hard link copy one needs to delete file in D (in order to break the link) and then create file with the same name instead of override.

Does robocopy supports that? Perhaps there is a special parameter for that, or is there any other free utility (preferable open source) that knows how to correctly update file if it's a hard link?


Solution

  • You could try using rsync - see this post for details, including readymade backup scripts:

    How to create rsync-like hard link backups with VSS on Windows