Quickly view all symbolic links, junctions points and hard links in a folder

When you are migrating a file server to a new server, and transfer data to your new SMB share, you may need to recreate junction points, as they can't be copied using (for example) Robocopy. Therefore it's a must to know where you have junction points, and that's where PowerShell and plain old cmd.exe DIR come to the rescue.

How to find all symbolic links, junction points and hard links in a folder in Windows Server quickly? Use dir /al /s /b.

Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]
[/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/R] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

Dir displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory. The /A switch is display files with specified attributes, and L is for Reparse Points attribute. Use this in one switch: /al.

Use /s to display files in the specified directory and all subdirectories (e.g recursive), and /b to leave out heading information and summary.

Give it a try:

C:\>dir /al /b
Documents and Settings

In PowerShell you find out about junction points, symbolic links and hard links using Get-ChildItem's LinkType filter:

Get-ChildItem . -Recurse -Force `
  | ?{ $_.LinkType } `
  | Select FullName, LinkType, Target

Or an example without recursive:

PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink> Get-ChildItem . -Force `
>>   | ?{ $_.LinkType } `
>>   | Select FullName, LinkType, Target

FullName                              LinkType Target
--------                              -------- ------
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Application Data Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Cookies          Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCookies
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Local Settings   Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Local
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\My Documents     Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Documents
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\NetHood          Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\PrintHood        Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Recent           Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\SendTo           Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Start Menu       Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
C:\Users\Jan Reilink\Templates        Junction C:\Users\Jan Reilink\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates

Thank you very much! <3 ❤️