Should I use Windows' hardlinks for backups?

Question

I'm not exactly backing up but its a similar idea.

I have a few archives on my computer. They have exact copies of certain files (mostly 300k to 1.5MB). It's enough to take up a gigabyte. I am using Duplicate Cleaner. It has an option to use hardlinks. I plan on never modifying the file and they are all on the same disk (external 1 partition).

Should I use hardlinks or is there a problem I don‘t foresee?

Answer 1

You shouldn't use hard links for backups. Hardlinks are just a reference to the 'real' file so you can't use them to create multiple copies. However, I think that, in your case, we are not talking about backups.

If you want to maintain just one copy of each file (in order to save disk space), but you need to access that file from different folders, then you should use hardlinks. Just keep in mind that if something happens to the original file, you will not have another copy.

Answer 2

No because hardlinks only give you an alternative NAME for the file, not a different copy. If you modify the file from any of the file name, the old content will be lost.

What you need is a copy-on-write behaviour. If you want an file system-level solution., you may use "previous versions", a.k.a. "system protection/restore" for this purpose; however, you don't have much control over it. You maybe better off using a backup/version control solution that can do delta backup.