WSUSContents folder is over 70 gb.

Easiest thing -- and probably the cheapest, too -- is get a bigger drive and forget about the problem.  2 TB drives are around $100, 4 TB drives are under $300.  (Periodic drive upgrades should be part of every IT budget.)

With fully-sunk internal recharge rates for skilled IT services way over $100 an hour, the cost of two hours thinking about the problem taken and invested in a bigger drive will deal with the issue for the foreseeable future.

Thanks.  That's not an option right now.  WSUS is installed on a VM and the host has limited disk space.  Maybe I should have included that in my question.

Increase the disk on the host, then, which in turn allows increasing the size of the VM file.  Same issue, only once removed.  If the disk on the host is so tight that 70 GB is an issue, that's a problem that's headed for you at full speed anyway.

So there's no way to decrease the size of the WSUS database?

There has to be.

Declining updates only frees up space after cleanup when the update being declined nis was previously approved.
Your products and classifications are what controls the min/max of data as well auto approve if any.


Content, are files not the database.

Your only option as pointed out in Tom's illustrated post, and others is torn the cleanup wizard which will declined superceded updates, expired updates, etc that you previously approved and delete the content.

If you added Windows 10, each creator update is 5.1GV and commonly there four to five variation .......

If the Cleanup Wizard does not help you, you may try a few things.

Read this https://www.3ait.co.uk/blog/solved-shrink-a-wsus-database-susdb-mdb-to-almost-nothing-2

You can also read this thread on Microsoft blog https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/38566b1d-1cdc-43ed-b6e7-dd97e9fb52ac/manually-clean-wsus-data-base?forum=smallbusinessserver

I have found some smart indications on it:

The cleanup wizard (at least for WSUS 3.0 where I tried) doesn't shrink the DB at all. The space may be free and be reused after but the db flies aren't shrinked (which actually makes sense as SQL Server else has to make it larger again later). First step sure is to run the wizard to get rid of obsolete updates filling the database and file system.

If you after this run still have real need on wasted storage you can do following:
- Ensure Windows Internal Database Service is started
- Start the Management Studio of SQL Server 2008 R2. Important: You have to start it with "Run as Administrator", else you won't get the required permissions.
- Link to the Windows Internal Database server using the pipe as server address:
\\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query
- Now you should be connected to the WSUS3 Database server and see in the Branch Databases the Database SUSDB.
- Rightclick on it and select the Task to shrink either the database or the files what ever you prefer.

BTW: For me this reduced the size of the database files (data and log file) from 8.5GBytes to 3.5GBytes.

Now the database should be shrunk to a reasonable size and the unrequired space should have been freed up on the disk.
But again - WSUS will have to expand the database file when running and the database may grow to the seen size quickly again.

HTH
Henry

And by then you have used your 2 hours!!

As the good Dr said, just buy more storage its a much cheaper way!

No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned.

I have recommended this question be closed as follows:

Accept: Tom Cieslik (https:#a42385071)

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