Using windows 7 symbolic link to organize your DropBox

Sep 28, 2010

If you are a user of the fantastic DropBox tool you might know that you have to organize your folders under a top root folder. This was really an issue for me which I wanted to solve because I like to organize my files in a different manner.

I used the mklink command from a Windows Command

E:\My Dropbox>mklink Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

/D Creates a directory symbolic link. Default is a file symbolic link. /H Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link. /J Creates a Directory Junction. Link specifies the new symbolic link name. Target specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link refers to.

I used it this way to create a symbolic link between a folder in “My Dropbox” folder on a folder outside:

E:\My Dropbox>mklink /D “Logs” “L:\Logs” symbolic link created for Logs <<===>> L:\Logs

So now everything which is on my *L:\Logs *folder is synchronized using DropBox.

You can also use this trick to move folder around on your system after having those under the DropBox root folder. Before that I always stop DropBox and restart it after the creation of the symbolic link.

Very helpful!