Creating Symbolic Link Windows Jun 2026

The drive eventually did fail, three months later. But Leo had a backup. And a new trick up his sleeve.

mklink "C:\Path\To\NewLink.txt" "D:\Original\File.txt" creating symbolic link windows

PowerShell uses the New-Item cmdlet to achieve the same result with a more modern syntax. The drive eventually did fail, three months later

In Windows, symbolic links (symlinks) are "super shortcuts" that trick applications into thinking a file or folder exists at a specific location, even if it is stored elsewhere . Unlike standard shortcuts, symlinks are handled at the file-system level, meaning programs treat them as the actual target. YouTube +2 Method 1: Command Prompt (Native) The most common way to create a symlink is using the mklink "C:\Path\To\NewLink

You have a file data.txt on the D drive, but you want it to appear in your Documents folder.

These point directly to the data on the hard drive. The file remains accessible through the link even if the original "file" is moved or deleted, as long as one link to the data exists.