Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the \Content volume on your WSUS server is running out of space but you had no idea how to change where the updates are stored locally?  Or maybe the disk where updates are stored fails and the replacement disk uses a new drive letter?  Either way, knowing how to change the location where WSUS stores updates locally is something that will likely come in handy sooner or later and here's how to do it:

You accomplish this move with the movecontent command of WSUSutil.exe, a command-line tool that is copied to the file system of the WSUS server during WSUS Setup. By default, Setup copies WSUSutil.exe to the following location:

WSUSInstallationDrive:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Server Update Services\Tools

You must be a member of the local Administrators group on the WSUS server to use the movecontent command of WSUSutil.exe, and these operations can only be run from the WSUS server itself which must be a 32-bit platform.  You must also create the new path for local WSUS update storage prior to using WSUSutil.exe.

The movecontent command takes an optional -skipcopy parameter which enables you to change the location of local WSUS update storage without copying any files. To change the location of local WSUS update storage complete the following steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK.
3. At the command prompt, navigate to the directory that contains WSUSutil.exe.
4. Type the following, and then press ENTER:

wsusutil.exe movecontent contentpath logfile [-skipcopy]

For example, if D:\WSUS1 is the new path for local WSUS update storage, D:\move.log is the path to the log file, and you wanted to copy the old files to the new location, you would type:

wsusutil.exe movecontent D:\WSUS1\ D:\move.log

For more information see

* Managing WSUS from the Command Line at http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/2686bd2b-910a-479b-961e-cea2a20280241033.mspx?mfr=true.

and

* Deploying Microsoft Windows Server Update Services at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=41777&clcid=0x409.

Ellis George | WSUS Support Engineer