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How to check if hardlinks are working

You've followed the guide step by step but still want to check if hardlinks are working, or someone on the Sonarr/Radarr support team asked you to check if your files are hardlinked?

You can use 3 options to check if you got working hardlinks.

All methods require you to login to your terminal with PuTTY or similar software.

Warning

You can't create hard links for directories ‼

You can't cross file systems ‼

Usenet

If you use usenet these examples won't work because you make use of instant moves/atomic moves and not hardlinks.

Still want to test if it works ?

Test a import of a 4k remux (or any other big file and you should notice it's almost instant) and not a slower and more I/O intensive copy + delete.

Method 1: Using ls

This is the easiest to check in my opinion.

In your terminal cd to your download location and run ls -al or type ls -al /path/to/your/download/location/

You will get a listing of all your files and on the left side you will see a couple of numbers, every file with a number above 1 are hardlinks.

!Hardlinks check ls -al

  • Red rectangle - Not Hardlinked
  • Green rectangle - Hardlinks
  • Blue rectangle - Folders/Directories you will need to go in to them to check if the files are hardlinked.

Method 2: Using stat

This way requires a bit more work.

  • In the terminal type: stat /path/to/your/download/location/file.mkv

  • In the terminal type: stat /path/to/your/media/location/file.mkv

You will get 2 results you can use to compare several things.

!Hardlinks check stat

  1. Links: Everything above 1 means it's a hardlink
  2. Inode: if the numbers match you know the files are hardlinked

Method 3: Using Inode copies

  • In your terminal cd to your download location and run ls -i file.mkv or type ls -i /path/to/your/download/location/file.mkv

This will reveal the inode of your file on the left side of the file.

!Hardlinks check ls -i

  • In your terminal type: find /mnt/user/data/ -inum ### or find . -inum ### if you're in your root folder.

### = Your inode number on the left of the file you found.

!hardlinks inode

It will list all files linked with the same inode number.