Dual Booting Windows and Linux: Sharing AI Models
I’ve been using both Windows and Linux for a long time, with a dual boot system that includes Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04. I use ComfyUI to generate AI images for my blog posts. Each AI model used by ComfyUI contains around 6 GB of data. To avoid having multiple copies of the same model in both operating systems, I’ve decided to create a shared partition and use symbolic links to point to the model in both OS.
Creating Symbolic Links
In Linux
In Linux, you can create symbolic links using the ln -s command. The syntax is as follows:
ln -s [target] [link]
For example, to link the model from a shared partition to the ComfyUI directory, you would use:
ln -s /mnt/shared/model /home/vanilas/ComfyUI/model
In Windows
In Windows, you can create symbolic links using the mklink command. The syntax is as follows:
mklink /D [link] [target]
For example, to link the model from a shared partition to the ComfyUI directory, you would use:
mklink /D C:\Users\Vanilas\ComfyUI\model D:\shared\model
By using this method, you can use the same model in both operating systems without having to store multiple copies.