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I'm currently using three 'cloud' services (Google Drive, Dropbox and SkyDrive). However, they are not very customizable; I've been unable to set all three services to sync the same local folder. And, because different services have different space limits, I want them to have a seperate local folder.

For example, I have the follow:

  • C:\Users\me\Google Docs\
  • C:\Users\me\SkyDrive\
  • C:\Users\me\Dropbox\

I have some 'super important' documents that I keep in another location

  • D:\Documents\IMPORTANT

Because these are 'important' I want them sync'd to all three services as soon as I create something in that folder.

I've used MKLINK in an attempt to do this:

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

Inside of each three local folders, I've used MKLINK to create a link to D:\Documents\IMPORTANT - It appears to work. Locally I see the folder, and can navigate to it. I only have a single copy of each file - everything is great.

EXCEPT

Google Drive doesn't sync it.

It 'knows' that it is not a real directory and it treats it differently! This appears to be a known issue: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/vImyhTG7qWs%5B1-25-false%5D http://blog.redhed.org/2012/04/use-existing-folder-for-google-drive.html

My understand of a symbolic link was that it was meant for exactly this situation. I want my applications to be unaware that the link is symbolic. I want them to simply see a folder with files in it. The OS, obviously, should handle this correctly 'behind the scenes'...but I would expect this to be transparent to the applications I'm running.

I'm starting to ramble, but, Is there anything I can use, besides MKLINK that will do, essentially, the same thing, but in a way that is 'transparent'?

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  • Based on the research I have done it does not appear you can. You won't make it transparent because the OS still needs to know the symbolic link exists. I use GoodSync to sync folders outside of those directories for my own use. There will be three copies + original no matter what ( at least in the cloud ) so I just create 4 copies.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 4, 2013 at 18:48
  • Any reason you insist on symbolic links? Have you tried junction points (mklink /j) which can be used to refer to existing folders? It's possible Google Drive also ignores these, but they're different, so it may as well consider them for syncing. Apr 3, 2018 at 22:19
  • Have you created a Junction or a link? Jul 22, 2020 at 4:58

1 Answer 1

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Do you mean hardlinks? Use fsutil hardlink create

C:\Users\ultrasawblade>fsutil hardlink create 
Usage : fsutil hardlink create <new filename> <existing filename>    
Eg : fsutil hardlink create c:\foo.txt c:\bar.txt
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  • I believe a hardlink would work; but then I would need to create a hardlink for each individual file, right? I'm trying to link a directory.
    – Rob
    Sep 6, 2013 at 7:12
  • last time i checkd folder junctions were synced by dropbox, treating them as normal folders
    – beppe9000
    Jun 8, 2019 at 15:41

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