How to replicate file automatically on Windows 7?

Question

Say I have a file: C:\private\book-list.txt

And it needs to be echo-ed automatically after a change is made to

C:\dropbox\book-list.txt
C:\box\book-list.txt

In order to my friends to be able to read it.

Please help me do this on Windows 7 platform.

Answer 1

In order to copy this file you can fire up a shell and issue this command:

copy C:\dropbox\book-list.txt C:\box\book-list.txt

You can either do that every single time that the file changes (and possibly try to automate that, or you can use do this:

mklink /H C:\dropbox\book-list.txt C:\box\book-list.txt

This does not copy the file contents, but creates a second directory entry. You can now open the same file by two different names. And one of those is in your dropbox folder.

If you change C:\dropbox\book-list.txt then the changes are written to the file on disk. If you open it from C:\box\book-list.txt you will see the same changed file.

Some more information about links:

The syntax:

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

    /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
            symbolic link.
    /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
    /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
    Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
    Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link refers to.

Links:

Technet on mklink
a question on serverfault

Deleting:

To delete it simply delete both copies. Only deleting the last copy will free the diskspace used.