Synchronize folder on network, preserving hard links
- by Waleed Hamra
I have few computers using Windows XP Pro. I want to synchronize/back a folder from one machine, to another one. This far, It's a simple problem, and I've used FreeFileSync for such operations, with very satisfactory results.
But, this all changes when hard links come into play. Today's folder contains lots of hard links, using such backup programs will result in hard links being treated as multiple files, and copied as such, greatly increasing folder size on destination, and defeating the purpose of using all these hard links in the first place.
It gets more complicated when we take into consideration the fact that network shares on Windows DON'T expose hard linking facilities, meaning that running a hard-link-aware tool like rsync using --hard-links will be of no use.
So my question, how can i backup my folder to the other computer, while preserving hard links? I don't mind installing 3rd party tools to do it, as obviously, the standard windows shares approach won't work... I am guessing there might be some tool that can be installed on both machines and works in a server/client mode? anyone has any idea how to do this?
