11-08-2015, 12:13 PM
The library shortcuts etc. are called symlinks - there are two types: soft & hard.
Mostly, you will only see "soft" symlinks, e.g. "My Documents" or "Downloads" - a soft link simply transparently redirectls the access to the real location of the files/directory.
This is not so important on a domestic Windows system, but on commercial systems that are organised as domains where users have "roaming profiles" where their data follows them regardless what machine in the domain they login to, symlinks are vital.
Typically, in a domain with roaming user profiles, all a user's personal data resides on a network file share that can be accessed from any machine in the domain - when a domain user logs into a host, their "My Documents", "Downloads" etc. links are set automatically to refer to the domain data (though it can also be cached on the local host too). All very cunning...
There are many features of NTFS that are rarely seen or used - alternative data streams being one of the most fun
Mostly, you will only see "soft" symlinks, e.g. "My Documents" or "Downloads" - a soft link simply transparently redirectls the access to the real location of the files/directory.
This is not so important on a domestic Windows system, but on commercial systems that are organised as domains where users have "roaming profiles" where their data follows them regardless what machine in the domain they login to, symlinks are vital.
Typically, in a domain with roaming user profiles, all a user's personal data resides on a network file share that can be accessed from any machine in the domain - when a domain user logs into a host, their "My Documents", "Downloads" etc. links are set automatically to refer to the domain data (though it can also be cached on the local host too). All very cunning...
There are many features of NTFS that are rarely seen or used - alternative data streams being one of the most fun
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