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windows-10ntfs

What kind of Windows 10 NTFS file objects are these?

I'm looking at a fresh out of the box, Windows 10 laptop.

Under the folder C:\Users\John.Doe\Documents File Explorer shows three "folders":

  • My Music
  • My Pictures
  • My Videos

I cannot see or access these "folders" from PowerShell nor the old cmd shell.

They do not appear to be shortcuts, symbolic links, hard links, or junction points.

What else is there? They appear to be some sort of reparse point but what? And how can they be detected by PowerShell?

Solution

  • They're junctions, at least according to the DIR command (which generally does not make things up).

    Documents> dir /a
  :
2021-05-29  11:43    <JUNCTION>     My Music [C:\Users\iggy\Music]
2021-05-29  11:43    <JUNCTION>     My Pictures [C:\Users\iggy\Pictures]
2021-05-29  11:43    <JUNCTION>     My Videos [C:\Users\iggy\Videos]
  :

    The junctions have the Hidden and System attributes, thus /a is needed. I don't know how those attributes affect Powershell use.