Downloading files from usenet

One of the most common questions i get asked is how to get files off of usenet and into a useable form. These files can be any number of things, but the purpose of this entry you can think of them as legit. :)

A little background first. Usenet predates the web, and allows anyone to post information to one of many newsgroups. These are distributed all over the net, and are synchronized automatically. Everyone has access to usenet via google groups. It is easiest to think of them as large forums or mailing lists. All usenet groups have size limits on the files posted up to them. For text groups this isn't a problem, but before the web and downloading there was no easy way to transfer files to other people (this was well before people ran there own servers or had "always on connections"), so someone came up with the idea of converting a file into a number of smaller files, converting those (in a reproducable manner) into text and posting them onto the newsgroup. Anyone interested could then get all these bits of file, re-combine them, and turn them back into the original file. This was at a time where if you were connected you knew how to do this. Geek would be the word you're thinking of!

Fast forward to now, and usenet still exists. It deals with huge amounts of traffic every day, and it is still a repositry for files. The difference is that normal people now use the internet, and they haven't a clue what usenet is, never mind how to use it! That's where this comes in.
There are a number of ways and means of doing this, but i'll cover the ones that work for me. First, you have to find the files. Each newsgroup is made up of millions of messages, and each message has a header. Think of this header as the to, from, and subject part of an e-mail. If you want to know what's in a newsgroup you have to get these headers. As you may need to go into a number of newsgroups, and each one has millions of headers, you don't want to do this. You want an index. Searchable, simple ways of getting exactly what you want. Luckily one exists. Go to newzbin. Here comes shock one. You have to pay (it won't be the first time) if you want to make this useful. You can search newzbin within any of the categories, but that will only get you the existence of the file and the newsgroup it's in. If you're cheap, you can go to the newsgroup and get all the headers, then select the ones you want, and download them, but that is a lot of hassle. It is better to pay newzbin (about 20p a day if i remember correctly) to become a member, you can then get an option to download a newzbin file (extension .nzb) which contains exactly what you need to get the file.

Once you have this file you need to use it, for that you need a program that can read and understand it. I recommend one called binary newsreaper. Once this is installed you need newsgroup access. You probably have this through your internet provider, but that probably doesn't have binary newsgroups and will have terrible retention (how long you can get a file for, newsgroups are purged after a period of time) and completion (there is no way to know if something is there until you try to download it. Bad completion means lots of wasted effort). Once again, it's time to part with some cash. I use newshosting which offers unlimited downloading for $14.95 a month. Pay up, get the access details, and follow the newsreaper instructions to get connected.

Once you're up and running, newsreaper has an "import nzb" option. Choose it, select your nzb file, a destination, click ok and then watch it go. It may take a while depending on the size of the target file.

When it's finished downloading you can look in your destination folder. You probably have several files ending in rar, par2, or r and a number (r01, r02 etc). Not very helpful. Step one is to confirm all the files are complete. That is what all the par2 files are for. Download a free program called quickpar, install, and you should then be able to double click a par2 file and have it automatically check (and repair if necessary) all your files. Once that has completed, get a copy of winrar and the rar files can be clicked. Always choose the .rar file, or the part01.rar file. The program can deal with it if you pick another file, but it's best to make it simple.
The unrar process will leave you with you file(s). All the par2, rar etc. files can be deleted now.