folder content types

What are the differences between standard content types and folder content types?

Are folder content types useful in any specific way? 

The real life example: we were looking to use folder content types as a way of grouping docs all related to a specific "Case" to enforce a specific retention policy on the "Case" i.e. all docs in that folder no matter what the content type on the individual documents.  

Looked at it on our system but it doens't seem to have the same properties as a standard content type so was hoping you had some experience with these in other situations?

 Hope this makes sense

Thanks

Ruth

There's nothing special about the folder content type, but what you're describing I would not use folders but instead you could you have a library with several content types and create views to manage them.

 Thanks for replying Chris.

We did look at content types just on the documents but thought a folder content type could be an extra classification.

I'll look again at our classification plan.

Hi Ruth,

I recommend using a Document Content Type for Information Management Policies; i.e. archival, retention, auditing, etc.  Separate that from where you physically store the documents.  The physical storage of documents will depend on who the contributor is, making it simple for them and your document (case) security requirements.