Free up space on your C drive by moving the WSUS database

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How to move the WSUS database to a different location

Posted on 31 March 2017 by Rachael White

Windows Small Business Server can control windows updates that domain PCs install with the WSUS service. The service downloads relevant updates, then pushes them across the LAN to the PCs.

This can save a lot of internet traffic, as an update is downloaded once to the server, then sent to PCs, in place of 20 PCs all downloading the update separately. The downside of this is that the database on the server can become large. It can easily be 20GB+ on the C drive. After a while, this maybe too large and will need to move the WSUS database to a data drive on the server, to free up space on the C drive.

The process to do this is as follows:

Open ‘SBS console’ and select the ‘Backup and Server Storage’ tab.

Then select the ‘Server Storage’ tab and click ‘Move Windows Update Repository Data’.

Select the new drive location and wait for the process to finish.

Once moved, there will be a folder called <Drive>:WSUS on the new drive.

Within this folder, create a new folder called ‘SUSDB’, this is where we will copy the database to in a moment.

Now open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. You will need to select the following on the first screen.

Server type :      Database Engine

Server name :    \.pipeMSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEEsqlquery

Authentication : Windows Authentication

Once loaded, expand Databases and right click on SUSDB. Select Tasks > Detach. Tick the ‘Drop Connection’ box and click OK. Leave SQL studio open and go to C:WSUSSUSDB and copy the entire folder contents to the new ‘SUSDB’ folder created previously.

Once this has copied, go back to SQL Studio and right-click Databases. Select Attach, click Add and browse to the location of the new SUSDB. Select SUSDB.mdf and click OK twice to re-attach the database.

The process is now complete, the database is on the new drive and you have freed up space on your C drive.

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