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I recently received a very good question regarding update management in Essentials 2007.

Q: How can I remove unwanted update content to reclaim disk space?

Here's a bit of background information on how updates are handled in Essentials (WSUS). Metadata and file content are separate in the WSUS architecture (which is leveraged by SCE for update and software deployment. The synchronization process with Microsoft Update only downloads the metadata (which is xml), so it is small in size. However, after you approve an update in the Updates workspace of the SCE console, the update file content will be downloaded to the WSUS instance on the SCE Server. Contained in the metadata of the update is applicability criteria that is passed down to the UA client for determining whether the client needs the update. 

How to Remove Unwanted Update File Content

1. If you want to delete the unnecessary update file content in SCE you need to decline it first.
2. Open SCE console, navigate to Updates space, right-click the update which you want to delete, and choose "decline"
3. Open WSUS console, click Options --> Server Cleanup Wizard to delete the unnecessary updates. Run the wizard with only the "Unneeded Update Files" option selected.