Hard Link :
when we do :
echo "Hello" > fileA.txt
ln fileA.txt fileB.txt
then cat both of them we get “Hello” itself but what happens is:
fileA.txt ─┐
├── inode 12345 ── data: “Hello”
fileB.txt ─┘
Both files point to the same inode and they are not copies, So you can have multiple names point to the same file and deleting any 1 of the file wont change the output of another file Useful if we want to create backups for Databases etc. So even if DB gets deleted it has a hard link backup
Soft Link :
Works same as Hard link but its like this : fileC.txt ──> fileA.txt ──> inode ── data So if original file (fileA.txt) is deleted even the contents of fileC.txt will be lost called broken symlink
Useful for creating shorcuts for long deep path files and Language versions instead of typing full “python3.14” - > python So if I do cat fileC.txt, The kernel opens the file but sees nothing but a symlink to the full path of fileA.txt and it travels there and reads that