Symlinks vs Hardlinks

multilinguarr supports both symlinks and hardlinks, configurable per instance.

Comparison

	Symlink	Hardlink
Cross-filesystem	Yes	No — must be same filesystem
Disk space	Zero extra	Zero extra
Breaks if source moves	Yes	No — both are equal references
Media server support	Universal	Universal
Use when	Storage and library on different disks/partitions	Same filesystem (typical single-disk or btrfs)

Configuration

Set link_strategy when creating an instance:

curl -X POST "$API/api/v1/instances" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "radarr-fr",
    "type": "radarr",
    "language": "fr",
    "url": "http://radarr-fr:7878",
    "api_key": "...",
    "storage_path": "/srv/media/storage/radarr-fr",
    "library_path": "/srv/media/library/movies/fr",
    "link_strategy": "hardlink"
  }'

How they work

Symlinks (movies)

A directory symlink is created in the library pointing to the storage folder:

library/movies/fr/Movie (2024)/  →  storage/radarr-fr/Movie (2024)/

Hardlinks (movies)

The directory structure is mirrored and each file is hardlinked individually:

library/movies/fr/Movie (2024)/movie.mkv  ←→  storage/radarr-fr/Movie (2024)/movie.mkv

Both files share the same inode — modifying or deleting one does not affect the other (until the last reference is removed).

Episodes

TV episodes are always linked at the file level (both symlink and hardlink), with season directories created as needed:

library/tv/fr/Show/Season 01/S01E01.mkv  →  storage/sonarr-fr/Show/Season 01/S01E01.mkv