You’re wording is a little weird, so hopefully we’re understanding your situation and desire. Symlinks won’t work, since they’re basically just links to files or directories, i.e. they do not contain the actual data. Most the software you’d use to torrent or to play media is going to struggle with following a bunch of symlinks. Hardlinks are better suited to seeding a torrent from one directory, while maintaining a copy elsewhere to fit in with your media filename standards, without double the storage size.
If symlinking is like forwarding your mail to a new address, hardlinking is like having one house with two or more addresses. Each address brings you to the “real” house. Deleting one address (maybe because you’re done seeding) does not remove the house or the other addresses. If you move or delete the target of a symlink, that link and any other symlink pointing to that location also breaks. The actual data of a file doesn’t get deleted until ALL of the hardlinks have been deleted.
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You’re wording is a little weird, so hopefully we’re understanding your situation and desire. Symlinks won’t work, since they’re basically just links to files or directories, i.e. they do not contain the actual data. Most the software you’d use to torrent or to play media is going to struggle with following a bunch of symlinks. Hardlinks are better suited to seeding a torrent from one directory, while maintaining a copy elsewhere to fit in with your media filename standards, without double the storage size.
If symlinking is like forwarding your mail to a new address, hardlinking is like having one house with two or more addresses. Each address brings you to the “real” house. Deleting one address (maybe because you’re done seeding) does not remove the house or the other addresses. If you move or delete the target of a symlink, that link and any other symlink pointing to that location also breaks. The actual data of a file doesn’t get deleted until ALL of the hardlinks have been deleted.