A while back I had shown you how to use the Symbolic Link feature, introduced in Windows Vista, to move Microsoft Office’s MSOCache folder and sync Sticky Notes. Apart that, there are several other cases where Symbolic Links and Junction points could come in handy, for instance if a certain installer forces a user to install on the main drive but did not want to do so. We can fix this issue using a symbolic link to redirect to another drive.
Windows doesn’t provide users with a place to view all soft and hard links on a drive. So if you are someone who makes extensive use of this feature and if you cannot remember locations of all your symbolic links, then here are two quick and easy ways to find and list them:
List all Symbolic Links Using Command Prompt
If you love working at the command line, then open up Command Prompt and type in the below command:
DIR /AL /S C:\
Replace C:\ with the drive letter you want to scan, or with a folder path if you don’t want to scan an entire drive.
Here,
/A: Displays all files with a specific attributeL: Specifies Reparse Points (symlinks and directory junctions)/S: Recursive search to find files and folders in and within specified directory
When search finishes, you will get a list of files/folder with their size, attribute, and full path. You could also print or save the command prompt output to file if you want.
List All Symbolic Links Using a Software
NTFS Links View is portable tool specifically created to find all symbolic links and junction points on a NTFS file system.
To use it, you just have to specify the location to search at, the rest is done by the program which will then list all found symbolic links and junction points with their name, type, full and target path. Before searching you can specify the folder depth to search from its interface.
The program can also generate and export a report in HTML, TEXT, XML, and CSV file format.
NTFS Links View works on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.
Download: NTFS Links View