Saving space - deleting WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download

Question

Often times in our environment, C drives run into space issues and the C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder gets relatively large, upwards of 3.5Gb in size. Server 2008, R2 enterprise.

Per this forum, it seems ok to delete. I have no had issues doing so either, however, I am now wondering, if we have WSUS set up for servers to pull updates from, will deleting these automatic updates have any adverse affects. Also, why does this folder get so large at times? Just a windows "feature", or is something possibly misconfiged that I can look at?

Solution

I never got any trouble by removing the folder.

In Windows 7+ or on 2008+ that will remove the update history when you check the windows update applet, but in add/remove program updates are still listed.

The searching for update become slower after the folder is removed, but it will work.

If you delete that folder to save on space I strongly suggest to do before an dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded. That would free up your WinSXS folder.

For the reason it become large, it largelly depend on what product and update it stage before the installation. As if you told yes to update microsoft products, the catalogue become larger