Finding junction files in Windows 7 and exclude them with DeltaCopy

Windows 7 has a sort of hard link, a junction file, which it uses to link the old location “Documents and Settings” to /Users/. Because of all this junctioning, you can’t just copy files with a Cygwin program like Deltacopy, because it will hang in infinite loop and copy a whole lot of things twice.

To identify junction files, run:

dir /AL /s

Here is an example exclude list for deltacopy for a standard windows 7 machine. Path names are specified assuming every user dir is supplied as separate dir to copy (because there are references to root, like ‘/Mijn documenten’:

--delete-excluded --exclude "/Application Data" --exclude "**/Downloads" --exclude "**/AppData/Local/Application Data" --exclude "/Local Settings" --exclude "**/Temporary Internet Files" --exclude "**/Flash Player" --exclude "**/Temp" --exclude "**/VirtualStore" --exclude "NTUSER.DAT*" --exclude "UsrClass.dat*" --exclude "ntuser.dat*" --exclude "parent.lock" --exclude "/Mijn documenten"  --exclude "/Mijn afbeeldingen" --exclude "/Mijn muziek" --exclude "/Mijn video's"

The ‘Mijn Documenten’ and such is a link to other dirs, so it doesn’t skip them. Be sure not to use these statements when running this on Windows XP…