I use junctions especially for kontakt libraries if I've moved them so Cubase can find the libraries again in older songs. In the past my kontakt libraries were not in a single folder then choose a more logical single folder, but I thought it would be more handy if they were all in 1 place together. However, then each Cubase song I had created that used one of these libraries could not find them anymore, despite Kontakt portable knows exactly where they are cause the are updated their location there. So instead of browing to each and every folder when I open any older song I found out I can junctions (symlinks) which are basically fake links and this means kontakt can find my libraries again because kontakt still thinks it can find these libraries in the old locations.
However, when it comes ot making backups of my whole partition this creates problems as hardly any backup software for win 10 seems to support simply copying junction folders as what they are, basicaly links. Some software ignores them fully and other software handles them as if they're not links and starts to copy all these real kontakt libraries those links are pointing to, logically ending up in having multiple copies of the same libraries, which is waste of precious space.

I've tried and still trying with the help of Co Pilot (bing chatbot ai) to create a batch/ps1 file to do this, as apparently in windows there is something called ' robocopy' which should be able to handle junctions as what they are, which are essentially just links to other folders.
I got it to the point where it copies junction folders when the are inside a folder in my partition, yet when they are in the root of the partition it still does not work. I have no coding experience or skill or even interest at all, but with lots of patience with Bing who makes scripts that do what I want correctly 1 out of 10 times, to test it, tell him what didn't work, and he makes alterations in the code. However, it's incredibly draining and I'm not sure if it will even fully work in the end. Also, when it copies a full drive the new drive's backup becomes invisible and I have to use some other code using total commander to make it visible again. Anyway, all of this is such a hassle since it feels I just want to make a backup and did not knew junctions would create such an issue with this.

However, endlessly searching for backup software that simply can handle junctions as the are is also draining me out, as I've looked so often.

So I'm wondering what others do when they simply want to make backups of their drives if they contain junctions.

I would super much appreciate some help with this!

 

FastCopy does a pretty good job handling junctions/symlinks,...

 

Thanks so much! I downloaded it and first let it make a copy of a small partition and added some junctoins to see if it worked..and it did! SO I'm very grateful! Thank you, thank you!
The only thing I have not figured out how to make it not replace files that are the same. I later tried to add junctions to folders that had been backed just fine, but just the junctions were ignored by my previous backup software, and somehwo it replaced all files that have not been modified ever since I made that backup. It's just a folder of kontakt libs i did not touch in months.

It somehow replaced 100% of all the files, 2 TB total, while they were not modified or changed. Some have the date on them that they were last modified in 2014. There does not seem to be an option in fastcopy where it just replaces files if they have a different size, so I can not try that route. I will try to " backup" that same folder with these tons of kontakt libraries tomorrow and see if it will replace them again or skip them if it somehow thinks they are the same and have the same modify date (Whcih they have). It it replaces every file on the 2 TB HDD again, it's a perfect option for making a backup once in a while, but it wears out the HDD if all the files are replaced every few weeks even though nothing has changed about them

However, maybe I've done something wrong, but the AI chatbot that I asked about it told me what i did, which is select diff (size place) which in theory should prevent this from happening. Maybe I am doing something wrong though?