NNTP Service stores newsgroup articles in one or more directory hierarchies. Each newsgroup has its own directory and each article is stored as a file in those directories.
The main default directory is C:\Inetpub\Nntproot, which you can change by modifying a virtual directory. You can create additional directory hierarchies on other disk drives or other computers by creating virtual directories.
NNTP Service automatically creates the required directories when you create new newsgroups. The newsgroup directory has the same name as the newsgroup; for example, a newsgroup named entertainment.news is stored in the directory \Entertainment\News under the root directory C:\Inetpub\Nntpfile\root\Entertainment\News by default.
All newsgroup article files have an .nws extension. NNTP Service also creates files that list the subjects of the stored articles; these files have an .xix extension. NNTP Service creates one of these subject files for every 128 articles in a newsgroup.
NNTP Service also maintains a number of internal data structure files with .hsh, .hdr, .lst, and .txt extensions. The default location of these files is C:\Inetpub\Nntpfile.
Warning Do not modify or delete these system files. Rebuilding NNTP Service restores these files if they are accidentally deleted or damaged.