NTFS Link. Good? Safe?

[sprinkles]

I've decided that I have dealt with lack of symlinks in WinXP long enough.

Apparently NTFS has the ability to make junctions, which is sort of close enough for my purposes. Problem is they didn't include the interface for setting it, so you either need to get their tools disc or download a program that does it.

NTFS Link is one of these programs. I'm wondering if it's good and safe. It does come from SourceForge, but I'm still skeptical as I've kept a relatively clean and fast running XP thus far and I don't want to change that.

I allocated a small C drive in XP because I hadn't planned to use it much (and I didn't for quite a while there) but I've been using it more and programs deciding their default directory and having user storage (e.g. My Documents, Appdata, etc) and downloads on the same space as the temp directory and the important system files is just total bullshit.

 

[UniqueMixture]

Why not just dl a linux kernel? Else pirate win 7/8

 

[sprinkles]

Why not just dl a linux kernel? Else pirate win 7/8

Yeah I kinda just want to stick with XP because I'm familiar with it and know how to get old stuff working in DOSBox on it for all my retro crap. It was bad enough being forced out of Win98.

Most of my system is Linux dedicated but I some times get the itch to play old games or do other stuff that can't work in WINE or on VM without heavy resource use.

Replacing it is just kinda more than I need to do.

 

[Qlip]

Huh.. I've didn't know that even existed. I have a feeling that making Windows do more than it wants to do may lead to heartache. I suppose if you're using it just to offload your userdata, it sounds like it could work well.

 

[UniqueMixture]

Yeah I kinda just want to stick with XP because I'm familiar with it and know how to get old stuff working in DOSBox on it for all my retro crap. It was bad enough being forced out of Win98.

Most of my system is Linux dedicated but I some times get the itch to play old games or do other stuff that can't work in WINE or on VM without heavy resource use.

Replacing it is just kinda more than I need to do.

My friend as one of the biggest fans of Betrayal at Krondor that possibly has ever existed. I would suggest to you that DosBox is quite easy to run on newer platforms

 

[sprinkles]

My friend as one of the biggest fans of Betrayal at Krondor that possibly has ever existed. I would suggest to you that DosBox is quite easy to run on newer platforms

Yes, that's a game I played the hell out of and still do some times.

Hmm... I'll consider it as an option. I might try this and if I foobar something I'll have a reason to upgrade.

 

[sprinkles]

Well, I tried it out and it seems to work quite nicely.

I tested it out on one of the worst offenders: Minecraft. I was able to offload .minecraft to my E drive and make a junction to it and it works perfectly (though I had to rename it from command line because Explorer hates dot files. Wouldn't ya know...)

So this solves one of my biggest peeves. Some stuff can be dealt with by path variables (like Minecraft) but honestly this is much better as it allows programs to play nicely and they don't even know they've been tricked into doing so.