system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: When I make folders and sub-folders in Windows, does the OS place the files therein in physically different places on the hard drive? Or do they just get some kind of location tag and are stored wherever? Or am I offbase completely?
gpt
It's just a location tag.

File systems contain directory structures.  Directories contain, among other things, pointers to where all the files and subdirectories are located on the drive.   

A large file may even be broken into pieces and stored in several different places on the drive.