In this post, we will discuss SharePoint 16 hive folder in SharePoint 2016. Popularly known as 16 hive folder, is the folder which got created while installing SharePoint 2016. It contains lots of important files to support SharePoint like web.config, Features, Web Parts, User Controls, Help Files etc are stored in the SharePoint 2013 server file system inside the 15 Hive.
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Also, you can read:
– SharePoint 2016 Fast Site Collection Creation using PowerShell
– Working with Content Type Hub in SharePoint 2013
– Create Content Sources for search in SharePoint 2013

16 Hive folder location is:
C:\Program Files\Common files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16
ADMISAPI: It contains soap services for Central Administration. If this directory is altered, remote site creation and other methods exposed in the service will not function correctly.
Bin: The directory contains all the core binary files, utilities which used by SharePoint Services. command line tools such as STSADM.EXE also present in this folder.
Client: This directory contains files that are used for creating office apps.
Config: This directory contains files used to extend IIS Web sites with SharePoint Server. If this directory or its contents are altered, the Web application will not function correctly.
GAC: This folder contains Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.Portable.Resources.dll and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.Resources.DLL.
HCCab: This directory has a set of cab files which has content information used by the SharePoint help system.
Help: The folder contains an HTML help file (.chm) used by the configuration wizard.
ISAPI: This directory contains all the standard Web Services for SharePoint and resources and configuration files that the web services use.
Logs: This is the folder where we can have all the SharePoint related logs will see. This is important when any problem or error occurs in SharePoint you have to trace the logs files in this folder to get the error messages.
Policy: This directory contains SharePoint 2016 Server policy files.
Resources: This directory contains the core.resx file used for creating language packs for SharePoint. By which different SharePoint sites with different languages and cultures can be created.
Template: It contains the core website functionality like the features, templates, configurations, resources of a website.
UserCode: This directory contains files used to support sandbox solution.
Web Clients: This directory contains files related to Client Object Model.
Web Services: This directory is the root directory where SharePoint back-end Web services are hosted, for example, Excel and Search.
Hope this will be helpful.