The process of moving apps or a folder to the Dropbox usually involves some form of symbolic linking or editing of a program’s configuration file in order to keep the software fully working under the operating system.

The idea behind the free software Dropboxifier is to streamline that process. The application basically moves the selected directory into the Dropbox directory and creates a symbolic link afterwards that points from the source folder to the new Dropbox folder location.

This speeds up the process considerably. Before I go into details, I’d like to mention why someone would want to move folders to Dropbox. The Firefox profile folder was mentioned earlier. It is also possible to move mailboxes, game save folders, work folders and practically anything else that you may want to access from multiple computer systems to Dropbox.

The configuration of Dropboxifier does not take longer than a minute at most. You first need to move the program into the Dropbox folder.

You need to specify a root folder for the folders that you want to move into Dropbox. This folder needs to be located inside the Dropbox folder that gets synced with the online storage. You then specify a name and a source folder that you want to move into the Dropbox.

Please note that the software only moves the folder into Dropbox at this point of the process. The red background color indicates that the folder is currently not linked on the system. You need to select the folder and click the resolve button to change that.

Available for selection are merge, overwrite or delete and link.

• Merge: Merges the source directory with the Dropbox. Files that are newer will be automatically replaced.
• Overwrite: Overwrites the Dropbox hosted files with the files from the selected directory.
• Delete and Link: Deletes the selected folder and creates a link directory to Dropbox.

You can repeat the process for every computer system you own. Dropboxifier is alpha software in an early stage of development. You should keep that in mind before working with the software. I’d recommend to backup the data regularly, and maybe use manual means to move important folders to Dropbox and create symbolic links. For the symbolic links, you could try the excellent Steammover which automates that part of the process.

Interested users can download the latest version of Dropboxifier from the project website over at Codeplex. The program is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7, and requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.

NTFS Links View is a brand new Nirsoft application that displays all symbolic links and junction points on a NTFS hard drive in its interface.

All the user needs to do is to point it to a location on the hard drive, the rest is done by the program which will then list all symbolic links and junction points with their name, full and target path and type in its interface.

It looks like the program scans the selected folder plus the first level of subfolders for the links to display those.

The usual Nirsoft options like generating an HTML report or saving the selected information are offered as well.

NTFS Links View is a handy program for users who want to analyze the symbolic links and junction points on their system. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the Nirsoft website.

My way of handling space problems on drives is to move the apps or games to another drive without having to reinstall them or lose data. I recently installed Dragon Age which installed itself on the c: drive. I decided to move the game from c:\ to the hard drive with lots of space instead.

The move process itself is easy enough. Just move the files in Windows Explorer, or any other file manager that you may be using, to another hard drive. You can move the folder by pressing shift during the drag and drop operation (if you do not press shift you copy the files).

Most games and applications will not start anymore after they have been moved around. The solution to this is to create symbolic hard links and Windows comes with the tool to do just that. Open a command prompt as an administrator. You find the Command Prompt under Accessories in the Windows Start Menu. Right-click the command prompt and select run as administrator.

The command that we are using to create a so called directory junction is mklink. A directory junction basically tells the operating system to create a mirror in another directory that provides access to all files of the selected directory in the mirror directory again. The files and folders of the mirror directory are however actually only redirected to the destination where they are actually hosted. This essentially means that you can make the game, application or Windows believe that the files and folders are still in their right place even if they are not.

mklink /J "new folder" "folder with the files"

That’s the basic command that we will be using. The /J parameter defines the type of symbolic link that we are creating, in this case a directory junction. The new folder is the mirror folder and the folder with files the folder containing the real files.

mklink /J "C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\" "e:\games\Dragon Age"

This creates a directory junction so that the files and folders of e:\games\Dragon Age are accessible by the program and Windows under C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\ as well (where they have been initially installed to).

C:\Windows\system32>mklink /J “c:\Program Files (x86)\Dragon Age\” “c:\games\Dragon Age\”
Junction created for c:\Program Files (x86)\Dragon Age\ <<===>> c:\games\DragonAge\

The same principle can be applied to other applications or games. It is for instance possible to move some Steam games or files to another hard drive to free up space on the one Steam is installed. Mklink is available in Windows Vista and Windows 7. I’m not sure about Windows XP right now, would be nice if anyone with XP could let me know in the comments. There are programs like Junction from Sysinternals that can create junctions as well in case that is needed.

Links are very useful tools for a number of reasons. One very good use of Links is linking to a directory on another drive so you can easily access its contents. Say, for example, you have a hard drive containing mp3 files that is mounted to the directory /data. You want to be able to easily access those mp3 files but you don’t always want to have to navigate through the directory structure to get to them. Make this easy with a link in your ~/ (home) directory.

Types of links

There are two types of links: Hard and Soft (Symbolic) links. The primary difference between hard and soft links is that hard links can only link to a file and can not span drives or volumes. Soft links, however, can link to directories and can span drives/volumes. At first you may think “Why even use hard links?” One major advantage to hard links is that a link will remain even if the original file is moved.

Another difference between hard and soft links, that isn’t really examined by the end user is that hard links reference an exact inode whereas soft links reference abstract files/directories and are given their own, unique inode.

How to create links

Links are created by using the ln command. Hard links are created by using the ln command alone where soft links are created with the ln command using the -s switch.

Let’s start out by creating a hard link. We’ll use a very simple example. Using the Enlightenment E16 window manager requires you to edit the ~/.e16/menus/user_apps file to add to your menu. Let’s say you want a link in your ~/ directory to that file so you’re not always having to type so much to get to that file. You can do this with a hard link by entering the following command (as your standard user:

ln ~/.e16/menus/user_apps ~/user_apps

This will create a link in your home directory called user_apps. The nice thing about this is any time you edit either file, both will change. So you can simply edit the file in your home directory and the changes will reflect in your ~/.e16/menus/user_apps file.

One of the more common uses (as stated earlier) is linking a file from the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory to your ~/.mozilla/firefox/XXX/plugins/ directory. Instead of linking file by file you can just link to the entire directory. NOTE: This is not often the case. Some distributions/installations handle the browser plugin system differently. I am using this as an obvious example of how soft links come in handy.

Where XXX is a random string of characters created upon installation of Firefox.

So to make a soft link from your /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory to your ~/.mozilla/firefox/XXX/ directory you would issue the command:

ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins ~/.mozilla/firefox/XXX/

Now your user installation of Firefox can see the plugins for the global installation. Of course this doesn’t always work in the case of plugins. Again, I state it was used as an obvious example to explains links.

One of the nice aspects of soft links is that a standard user can link to files in any directory. But just because they can link to them doesn’t mean they can edit them. You can create a link from the /etc/hosts.deny file to your home directory but, as the standard user, you can not edit the file. The standard user will, however, see all edits made to this file when edits are made by a user with write permissions.

Confused?

Let me try to explain that in another way. Say, for example, you want your users on your Linux machine to be able to see the contents of file /data/SAMPLE_DATA. You don’t however want them to see the contents of the /data directory. Remove the read permissions from the directory /data with the command:

chmod -R o-w /data

and then give the file SAMPLE_DATA back read permission with:

chmod o+w /data/SAMPLE_DATA

command.

Now link to the SAMPLE_DATA file with the command:

ln /data/SAMPLE_DATA ~/

and the user will have a hard link to the file that they can read but not edit.

Final thoughts

Although links can be a bit confusing, they are a very helpful tool to use with the Linux operating system. They can make your administration job easier and save hard drive space. Get to know links, they are your friends.

Could be fatal for commercial software that has been bought as it will stop working altogether or revert back to a trial version that is most likely expired. You could uninstall and reinstall the software program. Could be trouble for users who do not have the serial number at hand anymore if the software is commercial. Could also be problematic because of custom settings that will most likely be gone unless they are stored globally.

A quick search on the Internet revealed no free software programs that aid the user in the process. The most popular commercial software program seems to be Application Mover by Funduc which costs $15 for a single user license. We like free here at Ghacks which is why the following way to move applications from one location to another should work as well for you.

Symbolic links come to the rescue. They can be used to point from the original folder to a new folder. Windows will recognize this as one folder in the original location although the files are located on another drive. To move c:\program1 to d:\program1 one would move the contents of c:\program1 to the d drive and create a symbolic link in c:\program1 pointing to the new location.

The process would therefor involve the following steps:

• Move (or copy) the files on c:\program1 to d:\program1
• Create a symbolic link from c:\program1 to d:\program1

There are several programs that can be used to create symbolic links, for example Junction by Sysinternals or SHJunction by Bitsum. The first program is command line driven while the second comes with a graphical user interface.

There is also a Windows Shell Extension for those who prefer to create the symbolic links in Windows Explorer.

A practical example would be to store files and directories in a different location than they have to reside in. This could be the Firefox profile directory, a Skype directory or the Windows Documents and settings folder. You basically tell Windows to look into the original folder but also in the linked folder for files.

NTFS Link offers three ways of creating hard links and junctions. The first and probably easiest way is by dragging and dropping a file or folder with the right mouse button to another location. The others are by making use of the New parameter in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer while the last works by right-clicking on an empty folder only.

The drag and drop function proves to be really useful and an uncomplicated way of creating hard links and junctions. It should however be noted that NTFS Links works best when run in pre-Vista operating systems as Windows Vista comes with its own possibilities to create symbolic links.

Users installing the software need to have administrator rights to do so and should note that only NTFS drives support the creation which means that it cannot be used on partitions formatted with FAT file systems. It should also be noted that Link Shell Extension is compatible with 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The type of link that is created depends on the source that is picked by the user. Picking files will create hardlinks, folders will create junctions and a partition will create a volume mountpoint. The benefit of creating that file system is that files and folders can be accessed in multiple places instead of just the source location.

In addition to the three link types specified above the Windows Vista version of Link Shell Extension supports the creation of Symbolic Links which have been introduced in the operating system.

The creation of remote links within SMB mapped network NTFS drives is supported by the software program as well. The easiest way to get an overview of the capabilities of Link Shell Extension is to visit the homepage which lists all supported modes and functions.