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Duplicate Cleaner 6 Manual

Link files

Windows only. Linking files is not yet available on macOS and Linux, and the panel is not shown there.

Here you can replace duplicate files with links. Windows shortcuts, symbolic links and hard-links are supported. Open the panel with the Link files button on the left of the Duplicate files tab.

The process deletes the marked files and replaces each one with a link or shortcut. The link points to the first suitable unmarked file in the same group.

When creating links there needs to be at least one file in each duplicate group left unmarked. This is the “original” file which the other, marked, files in the group are linked to. If any group has all its files marked, linking won’t go ahead.

Choose the kind of link:

Create Windows shortcuts

Section titled “Create Windows shortcuts”

Replaces each marked file with a Windows shortcut file (.lnk, also known as a shell link) which points to another file in the same group.

Section titled “Create Symbolic-links”

Creates a symbolic link (also known as a soft link) in place of each marked file.

NTFS (Windows) drives only. Symbolic links can link between drives. Creating them requires administrator rights - run Duplicate Cleaner as administrator, or turn on Developer Mode in Windows settings.

Section titled “Create Hard-links”

A hard-link is a directory entry for a file. Every file can be considered to have at least one hard-link. On NTFS drives, each file can have several hard-links, so a single file can appear in many folders (or even in the same folder with different names). Because all of the links refer to the same file, programs can open any of the links and change the file. A file is only deleted from the drive when all of its hard-links have been deleted.

NTFS (Windows) drives only. Hard-links cannot span drives (different drives or network shares). Use with caution.

Once linked there will appear to be no difference between a hard-linked file and the original in File Explorer. Hard-linked files will also show up as duplicates again if you rescan, unless you tick Count hard-links on file and Ignore hard-linked files in Search filters.

Options

Section titled “Options”
  • Protect important system folders - Marked files in important system folders will not be linked. For a list of these folders, see Skip system folders.

Click the button for the kind of link you want to start. You will be asked to confirm.