Create NTFS symbolic links from within Linux

Solution 1:

By using NTFS-3G Advanced, it appears possible to treat existing junctions/NTFS links as if they were Linux symlinks, but my actual goal of creating new ones that work within Windows is a no-go:

Dereferencing junction points and symbolic links created by Windows is thus made possible, so are hard linking, renaming and deleting, but creating new ones is not.

Solution 2:

How to make a symbolic link (aka: junction point or reparse point) on an NTFS drive from Linux. Taken from: http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-advanced/extended-attributes/

If needed: sudo apt-get attr

# Display the reparse data of the file source-file
getfattr -h -e hex -n system.ntfs_reparse_data source-file

# Copy the reparse data of the file source-file
# to the file target-file
REPARSE=`getfattr -h -e hex -n system.ntfs_reparse_data source-file | \
         grep '=' | sed -e 's/^.*=//'`
setfattr -h -v $REPARSE -n system.ntfs_reparse_data target-file

Solution 3:

I know this thread is pretty outdated, but lately I've had the same problem (I needed to move some windows system folders to another drive) and here is simple solution.

In Windows, copy (not move) the folder into new location and create symlink to it with slightly different name (so no collision occurs) and then in Linux simply delete original folder and rename symlink to original folder name. Restart and it's working. Used systems were Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.

Lubo