What is the advantage of using hard links instead of copy?

I have setup Sonarr to use hard Links instead of copying.I confirmed that indeed hard links are generated.

However, Windows (WIN7 64 bit) File manager(s) count each hard link as real files so that it appears that the files take up more space than they actually do.

My drive is now “full” according to windows, and refuses to let me add more files.

Therefore, what is the point of using hard links if windows doesn’t allow me to add more files to the drive anyway?

Hard links only consume the disk space once, there may be a small amount of space that is used to create the hard link (I’m not sure), so if the drive is completely full (0 bytes free) you may not be able to create them.

Hard links need to be on the same hard drive though, since the file exists as a whole in either location (deleting one preserves the other).

I just created a hard link of an 11GB file on Windows 10 and my free space did not change, still 55.5GB free.

I did some more tests by manually adding hard links.
In this case, if I calculate the sizes of all directories (with hard links) and add them up, it is more than the total size used according to disk properties. Thus, directory size calculation counts hard links as real files, but appears to only count once according to the disk properties.

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