Question

How can you make out whether two files are copies or links?

Answer 1

If you copy a file it will duplicate the content. So if you modify the content of a single file, that has no effect on the other one.

If you do a hardlink that will create a file pointing on the same content. So if you change the content of either of the files the change will be be seen on both.



A hard link is basicly a second filename for the same file. So if you hardlink a file, it will only be once on the filesystem, and therefore only take up space once. So you want to use this if you wish to save diskspace.