What's the difference between "Libraries" & "System Folders"

What's the difference between "Libraries" & "System Folders" named Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music... etc - See Screenshot below with the 2 sets of folders marked in red & green. Calling the former system folders as that's what windows says they are. But they are libraries for all practical purposes.

These 'system folders' appear below your 'My Computer' while the Libraries appear after all your drive partitions like C,D etc.

I used to think they are just links to the same libraries but when i include my data folders in both of them things start going haywire and i find my folders show some name but are named something else entirely if you right click and check properties (typically with 2 or 3 -Copy -Copy added on to the folder name)

Anyone has any idea ?

(If both these sets of libs point to different folders there's never any problem. I can't delete the system folders though nor rename them though while I can do whatever i want with the libraries.)

The System Folders (or known as Shell Folders) can contain virtual or physical folders.
The Libraries collection is a collection of Symbolic Links, which point to the target folder. You can delete a symbolic link, without affecting the actual target folder.

To add to @glasskuter, right-click one of the items under This PC and choose Properties, will show the actual location of the folder. Or in other words the Libraries are, in practical use, shortcuts to the actual location of them. An example of Documents under This PC on my Win11 Pro:

Thanks a lot for the replies guys.

It's not that simple though. For normal folders what you say is correct BUT the "Documents" folder under "My Computer" (and the 3D Objects, Downloads etc folders) is different since it redirects (to any folder you want) just like the "Libraries"

So windows calls it "System Folder" though it has nothing to do with the system stuff

But that's not all. These folders seem to be using something similar to how Linux Desktops name files & folders where you can have multiple folders or files with the SAME NAME because that's just the Display Name while the actual name is very different

Most such naming schemes on linux add random numbers or unix time or such string at the end of the actual file names while the displayed one can be identical for hundreds of files.

Windows 10/11 seems to be adding -Copy -Copy at the end of file names whenever it finds a duplicate name and KEEPS SHOWING the DISPLAY NAME - See SCR below and it will become clearer:

You will notice that the folder is displayed as "3D Objects" even in the explorer path field or properties dialog box
BUT
when you click on the path breadcrumbs it shows the real name "3D Objects -Copy -Copy" (bcoz i copy pasted that folder 3 times. Some of these folders have entirely different names depending on when I created them or which folder was pasted here)





My problem was simply that I wanted the "Documents" folder visible under "my computer" to point to my data folder and ALSO want the "Documents" Library visible under 'Libraries' to point to the Same my data folder

But doing that results in the strangest things if you do a lot of copy/paste/rename/create/delete folder operations because no where does windows say that these folders are being handled in entirely different way than the usual filesystem. Like in Linux we know that what it displays on the Desktop will have different file name and you can go and edit that link in terminal to change the real file name or the display name. Here I have no idea how to change the real & display folder names.

Ok, as per google search, if you go here in regedit:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace

you can see these folders with random number names. No idea how to make out which random string is for which folder though

There's some detail here:






[Edit] Ok, this seems to clear up the issue. It's all hard coded and we can't edit these it seems



For future reference, the subkeys correspond to the following folders:

---

"Those are NameSpace Subkeys and that is the way Windows stores shell folder references in the Registry.
You cannot make your own NameSpaces in Windows 10.

{1CF1260C-4DD0-4ebb-811F-33C572699FDE} - Music Folder

{374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B} - Downloads Folder

{3ADD1653-EB32-4cb0-BBD7-DFA0ABB5ACCA} - Pictures Folder

{A0953C92-50DC-43bf-BE83-3742FED03C9C} - Videos Folder

{A8CDFF1C-4878-43be-B5FD-F8091C1C60D0} - Documents Folder

{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641} - Desktop Folder

{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} - Recycle Bin

---

Because i keep everything so organized I very rarely search in windows. I am a stickler for file/folder naming conventions and where I put 'my stuff' even down to the icons I assign to types of folders. I don't want or need to depend on a bunch of symbolic links messing up this neat 'filing cabinet' I've built for myself. When I got my first Windows 7 machine in 2009 I hated libraries. I still hate them and always disable. I know I'm not the norm in this regard, but it works for me.