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I am trying to create a symbolic link to move my netflix downloads on my surface pro to another drive (as the main SSD drive is small and i dont want to use it with netflix downloads)

I can create the link ok, but i am finding that the contents are copied rather than redirected, i.e. there are two versions of each file. Does anyone know of a way to do this so this behaviour can be avoid ed? Just copying the files to a new location kind of defeats the object!

I am using win 10 Pro.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Matt

I'm confused about what you did. Did you manually copy the files over, delete the originals, then create the link? Or you created the link, but new files are showing up in the old location? Or something else?

This post may be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/commen ... f_offline/

just brew it! wrote:

I'm confused about what you did. Did you manually copy the files over, delete the originals, then create the link? Or you created the link, but new files are showing up in the old location? Or something else?

This post may be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/commen ... f_offline/

The way I understood it was this.

(Link) C/original dir/
was linked to
(Target) D/new dir/

and now files are showing up in both rather than just being put in D/new dir/

That's what it sounds like to me also, but moving or "redirecting" files isn't what symbolic links(or "shortcuts" to use Windows-speak), do. Creating a symbolic link doesn't move or relocate any of your files it just creates a link between two directories. All your stuff will still be accessible from either disk path. If you want to move a bunch of files from one directory to another, and not have them available from the old path, then you don't want a symbolic link. You just want to move the files.

I use symlinks on my workstation here when setting up local dev sites. The document root is set to a directory in /var/www/ and symlinked to a directory in my home folder which contains all my client projects. That way I can move and shuffle around projects as needed without having to mess with apache.

Yeah with a link, the files are still going to LOOK like they are showing up in both places, since one location is just an alias for the other. So unless disk space is clearly being consumed on both drives when the downloads happen, this is perfectly normal.

But he's also looking at a way to redirect future downloads to the other drive.

Wouldn't that be a setting in the application? I don't use Netflix on the PC so much, so I'm not sure how it handles things there.

Thanks guys for your comments.

I basically want to have the folder on the C drive forwarding the files to the D drive, I do not want copies on both the C and D drive.

Netflix doesn't give you the option of changing the download location in the app. People have said that you can create symbolic links and junctions and that it works but it doesn't seem to really work because it still feels up the C drive. So you effectively have two copies of each file.

If you delete the file (movie or whatever) on the C drive it is immediately recreated as soon as you open the app.

Hopefully I'm making sense and this can be achieved!

Many thanks.

Matt

I forgot to say, disk space is definitely being used up on both drives, I am checking the size of the folders immediately and they are both increasing in size at the same speed.

So I'm not assuming that I am looking at a clone file rather than the actual file there are two copies of the actual files whatever size they are.

Try un-doing what you already did, and follow the instructions at the link I posted.

thanks, but that page was where i started..... lol

the process they show works to create the link, but causes the files to be duplicated.....

windows needs to be tricked into thinking the files are being placed in the c drive directory, but in fact they are being placed on the d drive....

moving the files is no good, because there is no link to the original directory.....

Directory size would show the size of symlinked stuff as well. Better check the drive/partition's free space.

(BTW, Windows "Shortcuts" aren't symlinks/junctions, they're LNK files.)

Symlinks are easy under Linux and I know they have theoretically been available on Windows for a long time but they remain a PITA to actually use.

How about this: Make only one symlink to the entire directory ("folder") that you want to link to instead of lots of links to the individual files. Or will that not work?

I have been creating one link to one folder......

Not sure whjat i am doing wrong... or if its not possible with a netflix folder?

cheers for all your responses guys....

Sounds like either you're creating the link in the wrong direction, or the Netflix app is ignoring the link. Probably the latter.

Unless you're seeing the amount used on the C drive grow (via Windows Explorer looking at your list of drives) then I think it's working. Pretty sure that the folders should grow at the same speed, because it's two views to the same folder.

edit: Which I guess is basically what meerkt said.