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I have an NTFS formatted drive (from a previous windows installation) and it contains some symlinks (reparse points),

For some reason, I can't do anything with these symlinks: I can't go to where they link to, I can't even delete them.

I guess the reason has to be that the link contained C:\ as a part of it.

How can I deal with this issue?

UPDATE:

To clarify, these links are junctions/reparse points.

For instance, I had C:\progs be a symlink to C:\Program Files

If I try to remove it, I get:

$ rm /media/disk/progs/ -rf
rm: cannot remove directory `/media/disk/progs': Operation not supported

I actually removed /media/disk/Program Files/ anyway.

UPDATE2:

My system is linux mint (ubuntu based)

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  • are the "links" named something like "foo.lnk" ?
    – akira
    Sep 20, 2009 at 20:19
  • no, that would be a shortcut
    – hasen
    Sep 20, 2009 at 20:30
  • Symlinks and reparse points aren't exactly the same thing. (NTFS symlinks work exactly as Unix ones.) Sep 21, 2009 at 12:16
  • Yea, I just didn't want people to think that I'm an idiot who thinks shortcuts and symlinks are the same.
    – hasen
    Sep 21, 2009 at 13:23
  • 1
    and i just wanted to clarify that you are not an idiot who thinks shortcuts are the same as symlinks. it's just not that common to create such reparse points in windows ...
    – akira
    Sep 23, 2009 at 4:39

2 Answers 2

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+200

As explained in the Questions & Answers of the NTFS-3G support section, deleting a Reparse Point is not fully supported by the NTFG-3G driver. You might have to install the Advanced NTFS-3G driver:

Why do I get an "Operation not supported" message when deleting a file?

The NTFS-3G 1.5012 driver has solved this issue, or you're trying to delete an NTFS Reparse Point which is not fully supported yet in Stable NTFS-3G, only in the Advanced NTFS-3G version of the driver.

I can't provide more specific guidance without more informations on your Linux distribution, version, etc.

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  • LinuxMint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04
    – hasen
    Sep 21, 2009 at 11:41
  • Awesome, I downloaded the "executable for knoppix", version, and it worked! I just extracted it somewhere and did what the README said.
    – hasen
    Sep 21, 2009 at 11:50
  • I'm glad I could help. Sep 21, 2009 at 14:43
  • 2 of the 3 links in your post broke
    – Ferrybig
    Oct 3, 2018 at 20:03
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Try using ntfs3g. You may have to create a file /.NTFS-3G if you have symlinks to a different drive letter.

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  • What exactly should I try?
    – hasen
    Sep 20, 2009 at 19:18
  • If he's using a mainstream distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE...) then it has the NTFS-3G driver installed by default.
    – user1931
    Sep 20, 2009 at 20:39

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