High Sierra Filesystem – Using Hard Links

dropboxfilesystemlinkssymlink

I have been using hard links, as described here, for linking my important folders to my Dropbox. A very useful trick for backing up without messing up your preferred directory structure.

After my update the High Sierra, all the hard links where corrupted in such a way that all the files were lost.

This leaves me with a problem. How do I backup selected folders from my harddisk through Dropbox without changing my original file organization, without losing all my info this time. Does High Sierra support hard links? It seems not… what to do in such a case?

update

So both Dropbox and OneDrive need me to put files in a dedicated folder. It seems like hard links are no longer an option. In this case, I suppose I should switch to a dedicated service that does allow me to 'check' existing folders into the backup?

Best Answer

I've been successful been using Dropbox with folders "out of the root" using symlinks:

  • Stop Dropbox (quit the app)

  • Create a symlink to the destination folder anywhere within the Dropbox folder trees

  • Relaunch Dropbox

The link is synched into Dropbox as a folder in that position. Works great!

EDIT: Unfortunately, as @krim mentions on the comments below, Dropbox stopped supporting this workaround at the end of 2019 ??

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