How do I view a file's hard links in Windows?

Question

I've found a description of hard links and junctions in Windows, however I'd like to know ,from the Windows UI or command prompt, how I can view the hard links of a particular file or folder?

score 60 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 19 '17 at 11:51

The fsutil utility included in Windows XP and higher. Example:

fsutil.exe hardlink list C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe

Sample results (from Windows 7):

\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
\Windows\notepad.exe
\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-notepadwin_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_9ebebe8614be1470\notepad.exe
\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-notepad_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_cb0f7f2289b0c21a\notepad.exe

antonio · Answer 2 · 2021-02-15T12:07:42.447

fsutil requires elevated system privileges. If you just need to read, and not create, links this is very inconvenient.

Microsoft releases also the free findlinks, which is much more syntax friendly, gives extra-details and does not require special privileges.

Judge yourself the same file, as from John K post, analysed with findlinks:

findlinks c:\windows\notepad.exe
FindLinks v1.0 - Locate file hard links

Copyright (C) 2011 Mark Russinovich

Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
c:\windows\notepad.exe

        Index:  0x000037A6

        Links:  3
Linking files:

c:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe

c:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-notepadwin_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_9ebebe8614
be1470\notepad.exe

c:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-notepad_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_cb0f7f2289b0c
21a\notepad.exe

EDIT

While the convenience of findlinks might persist,

starting with Windows 10 Insiders build 14972, symlinks can be created without needing to elevate the console as administrator.

See blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper

One can also observe that now fsutil.exe does not require elevated privileges any more.

Microsoft's goal is to align the symlinks functionality to Linux standards, where they are very common.

Thanks to pinjaliina for pointing out this.

Arseniy · Answer 3 · 2013-12-15T22:01:41.853

Not directly what you need but may still be useful for such goal when used cleverly:
FINDDUPE, a standalone command line utility hosted at http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/finddupe/ address, has side functionality, which allows listing all hardlinks within a directory recursively with the following call:
finddupe -listlink <directory_of_interest>

Here is an example of what one gets as an output:

Hardlink group, 2 of 2 hardlinked instances found in search tree:
  ".\1"
  ".\_1"

Number of hardlink groups found: 1

NOTE: There is a number of projects with the similar name on SourceForge, but nothing actually hosts the utility above as for now.

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 19 '17 at 12:05

1

The ln CLI utility by Hermann Schinagl should work:

ln --list

There's also a shell extension.

edited Jun 19 '17 at 12:05

Palec

129

answered Oct 06 '11 at 16:45

drcursor

88

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 19 '17 at 12:06

1

The FindLinks tool from Sysinternals should be exactly what you need.

findlinks C:\Windows\notepad.exe

edited Jun 19 '17 at 12:06

Palec

129

answered Oct 06 '11 at 16:46

Massimo

72,827

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 23 '16 at 06:20

1

Try the program NTFSLinksView - works fine for me on Windows 10, should work on Vista and later.

answered Sep 23 '16 at 06:20

Aidan

111

How do I view a file's hard links in Windows?

6 Answers6

EDIT