Icon Overlays for your Hardlinks. Free!

HardLinkOverlay is a Windows shell extension application that shows you if a file is part of a hardlink set.

What does it do again, exactly?

You’re probably familiar with that little arrow on the bottom left of a file’s icon that indicates that it is a shortcut, right?  Well, this does the same thing for hardlinks, but instead of an arrow, it is an “H”, like this:

Things you should know.

If you already have hardlinks on your system before HardLinkOverlay is installed, they may not show up right away.  After banging my head on this problem for a bit, I realized that the icons must be cached somewhere.  I’m still working out how to refresh the cache easily, but in practice it doesn’t cause problems.

One more thing.  Obviously, in order to use HardLinkOverlay, you need HardLinkMaker, which is available elsewhere on this site.

Praise for HardLinkOverlay:

I thought hardlinks couldn’t get any better, then this comes along. – TimC

Supported Platforms:

• Windows NT 5.0 and up (as far as I know, all modern flavors, though it has not been tested on Vista or Windows 7.)

How to install HardLinkOverlay:

• Download the HardLinkOverlay zip file.
• unzip it into a safe place that won’t get deleted.
• Navigate to that place, find and run Register.bat
• Open Windows Explorer, create a hardlink (you do have HardLinkMaker, don’t you?), then view.
• If you don’t understand any of this, don’t even attempt to install it.

Downloads:

Changelog:

• HardLinkOverlay Version 1.0 (2009-09-24)

Legal:

HardLinkOverlay is copyright (c)2009, poweredbycode. All rights reserved. While every effort has been made to ensure that this utility is error-free, it is a free application and I’m only human. As such, it carries no warranty, suitability for a particular purpose, or guarantee of any kind. Use at your own risk. If you don’t like it, use UnRegister.bat, then delete it. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, who has nothing to do with this.