filesystemsfat32fathardlinkfile-link

Filesystem links on a FAT32 formatted storage


I know FAT32, as well as FAT16/12 neither support symbolic links nor hard-links. However I came up with this idea:

The FAT specification describes that every file is associated with a directory-entry. In my understanding, one could say that a file-entry in a directory somehow or other points to the file's content.

So, how can I define two directory-entries which point to the same file-content? Or, what could prevent me from doing so?

Use case: I have a USB mass storage device for my car radio, and I want to use directories as playlists since the radio software doesn't support playlists. So it isn't important to me how Windows behaves when doing this.


Solution

  • What you are talking about ("two directory-entries which are pointing to the same file-content") are hard links. chkdsk will report them as cross-links and break them, "repairing" the files (in fact making the copies).