I am attempting to grasp hardlinks. When one copys a file from /dir1/file1to /dir2/file1does this create a hardlink, or is the data actually duplicated and now two hardlinks exist? 
copying a file to a new directory, does this just create a new hardlink?
hard link
It Creates a new file when you copy. Hardlink is something different ln fileA fileB is a hardlink.ls -il fileA fileB The i argument will show the inode on the HDHere you can see that both fileA and fileB have the same inode number ( 1482256 ), also both files have the same file permissions and the same size, because that size is on the same inode it does not consume any extra space on your HD ! Now if we would remove the original fileArm fileAand have a look at the content of the link fileB cat fileByou will still be able to read the funny line of text you typed. (MAGIC !)