SOLVED: 3 Surprisingly Easy Ways To Clean Up WSUS & Get Disk Space Back
We have many complex ways to clean up the WSUS database to make the WSUS MMC stop crashing and to free up space on the disk holding the database. However, there are three very simple methods that our own technicians forget about.
Today we had a client with a 360GB drive, 320GB of which was filled with WSUS patches. After an hour of running some of our more complex WSUS clean up processes, she had only managed to return about 10GB of free space so she (correctly) asked for help.
How To Clean Up WSUS & Make Disk Space with No Skills
Put simply the solution is just to decline very old patches.
Remember that WSUS downloads the metadata for a patch (i.e. name, date, description…) from the MSCDN (Microsoft Content Delivery Network) but it does not download the actual patch files until two things happen:
You approve the patch for install
At least one computer indicates that it needs the patch
This is why it may take two days for a patch to be installed on client machines after you approve it.
This is also why declining patches that you have never been needed by any of the machines on your network will not add much space.
So, if you have been running WSUS for years, you will likely have thousands of patches that are downloaded but no longer needed.
Think of your own infrastructure. If you rolled out Windows 10 eight years ago, you will have approved patches for Windows 10 version 1511, and version 1607 and version 1703 and, so on. Today you are likely running Windows 11 and ALL of the Windows 10 patches you had approved and WSUS downloaded previously will NEVER be needed again, so get rid of them.
We use three methods to do this:
1 – Delete Known Old Junk
Launch WSUS
Expand your server > UPDATES > ALL UPDATES
Set the APPROVAL drop down filter (top left) to ANY EXCEPT DECLINED) and the STATUS to ANY
Click SEARCH (for the ACTION ITEMS pane in the top right)
Search for anything you no longer have
One of the easiest things to look for is ancient versions of Windows 10 and MS Office, so we search for these numbers and dump ’em!
1507 (Original Win10 Release from July 2015)
1511 (November 2015)
1607 (Anniversary Update, August 2016)
1703 (Creators Update, April 2017)
1709 (Fall Creators Update, October 2017)
1803 (April 2018 Update)
1809 (October 2018 Update)
1903 (May 2019 Update)
1909 (November 2019 Update)
X86 – you likely do not have any 32bit MS Office or Windows anymore, but you likely have patches approved and downloaded for them because you did have them years ago
ARM64 – it is very unlikely you have ARM64 architected computers in your environment
As noted, removing patches you have not downloaded will not do much for disk space, but it will help the WSUS Database run more smoothly
PROJECT (if you don’t have MS Project anymore)
Select them all, RIGHT click and select DELETE
Yes, this is an iterative process in that you have to search for each item one at a time, and then delete all of the returned results
2 – Delete Very Old Patches
Launch WSUS
Expand your server > UPDATES > ALL UPDATES
Set the APPROVAL drop down filter (top left) to ANY EXCEPT DECLINED) and the STATUS to ANY
Click on the RELEASE DATE column name to set the sort order
If you do not already see the RELEASED DATE column, just right click on any column and add it
Scroll to the very bottom and select anything that is suitably old date (i.e. anything before say 2019), RIGHT click and select DELETE
The idea here is that the software patches here are so old that you would not install them on a new computer added to the network, because they would have software that old
3 – Remove Old PRODUCTS AND CLASSIFICATIONS
Launch WSUS
Expand your server and click on OPTIONS
Select PRODUCTS AND CLASSIFICATIONS
Unselect anything you no longer have or want on both the PRODUCTS and the CLASSIFICATIONS tab
For instance you likely no longer have HOST INTEGRATION SERVER, or BIZTALK SERVER or EXCHANGE SERVER 2010, or WINDOWS 10 CREATO(RS UPDATE, so why are you keeping their patches
WSUS Server Cleanup
After these three changes have been made, clean up WSUS using the easy built in tool:
Launch WSUS
Expand your server
Click OPTIONS
Click SERVER CLEANUP WIZARD and let it run
In our case we returned 62GB of drive space and made WSUS MMC GUI run much smoother and we did not have to run a script or do anything complex. Just use the easy peasy WSUS GUI and some common sense.
