Why are aliases the same size as the original files?

[ramparts]

I've created aliases of some images so I can move them to different folders without duplicating the actual images, for purposes of saving hard disk space. Yet all of the aliases are the exact same size as the original images. Why is this?

I'm running Lion.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

How did you create the aliases?

In Mac OS X, what is an alias and how does it work?

 

[ramparts]

I right-clicked each file in Finder and clicked Make Alias, or (same thing) highlighted the file and did CMD-L.

 

[kolax]

How are you finding the alias file size? CMD+I on the alias?

 

[ramparts]

How are you finding the alias file size? CMD+I on the alias?

Yep.

 

[iLog.Genius]

Weird. All my aliases are small in size (hundreds of KB). Can you post a screenshot of the info window?

 

[ramparts]

Attached. It's the same size as the original.

 

[interrobang]

What is the format and capacity of your disk?

 

[ramparts]

250 GB, OSX Extended (Journaled)

 

[talmy]

My understanding is that icons and preview images are stored in aliases. This could explain why an alias of a photo is so big. Could you just use an alias of the containing folder instead? That's what I do. You can also create hard or soft links at the system level (the command prompt) which have little to know size but can't be created in Finder and have some other limitations.

 

[ramparts]

Could you just use an alias of the containing folder instead? That's what I do.

No, it wouldn't work, I'm trying to take a subset of photos in my Pictures folder and use them for the random desktop wallpaper, so an alias of the whole folder would be too much (and in that case I could just point the desktop preferences to that folder anyway). It's only a couple of hundred MB, I'll live.

 

[kolax]

No, it wouldn't work, I'm trying to take a subset of photos in my Pictures folder and use them for the random desktop wallpaper, so an alias of the whole folder would be too much (and in that case I could just point the desktop preferences to that folder anyway). It's only a couple of hundred MB, I'll live.

Create a folder within Pictures called 'Wallpapers' and then create an alias of that..

 

[ramparts]

Create a folder within Pictures called 'Wallpapers' and then create an alias of that..

Obviously I could do that but I want to keep all my photos in the same folder, not put some of them in a subfolder and the rest in the main folder. I guess I'm out of luck on this one.

 

[matrix07]

This is weird... or not. I tried my 7.4 MB. JPEG file and the alias is only 1.9 MB. I tried with 537 KB. JPEG and the alias is also 1.9 MB. Seem like you just incidentally hit its sweet spot there.

 

[theSeb]

I would suggest using symbolic links instead of aliases. The only disadvantage is that if you move the files, then the sym links don't update by themselves, like aliases do. Symbolic links take up a couple of kilo bytes.