[Discuss] On-site backups revisited - rsnapshot vs. CrashPlan

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Rich Pieri wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:31:33 -0500
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote:
> 
>> --link-dest target. Since NTFS does not support hard links, thethe
> 
> NTFS does support hard links.

Yes, at least as far back as NT 4.0 (I used them via 3rd party tools),
but as far as I know they've never been supported by the Windows GUI,
and I find it quite plausible that rsync doesn't support links on NTFS,
even though it could.

(Like most things in Windows that are a bit out of the mainstream, if
you use them, all kinds of things break due to assumptions programmers
make. For example, in the NT 4.0-era I created a file system consisting
of multiple disk using junction (mount) points. No application installer
could figure out that the target path had adequate free space when the
root drive didn't. I'm sure they've gotten better in newer versions as
multi-disk file systems have become more common.

You get similar weird behavior if you try and use hard links on NTFS.)

 -Tom

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Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/