I’m wondering if there’s a way for movies that are also TV show specials to show up in both libraries without having 2 of the same file on my hard drive.
For example, there’s 3 Berserk Movies. The TVDB has them listed as specials for the 90’s anime. IMDB has them each listed as a movie. Currently I have a folder named Movies, inside of that folder is 3 folders, one for each movie, with the movie MP4 inside. I have another folder called TV Shows>Berserk>Season 0 with all 3 movies inside, named in the tv show fashion, Berserk S00E01, etc etc.
Is there any way for me to make those 3 movies show up in the series’ specials AND my movies library with a single file for each movie so I can delete 1 set for space?
Leave the files in one of the directories and use the mklink command to create a hard links to them in the other directories. Make sure to use the ‘/h’ option so that hard links are created.
The information is only stored on disk once; the hard link creates an additional reference to it. It shares all the same properties as the original. In fact, if you delete the original the hard link remains and the data is still available.
If you want to convince yourself of this, check your available disk space. Then, create another hard link to one of your media files and see that the available space remains the same.
