The Patch Management Archive folder is using up a lot of space, how to clear the directory's contents

Last Modified

Fri Apr 17 17:31 GMT 2020

Description

  • The C:\Program Files (x86)\N-able Technologies\Windows Agent\Patch Management\Archive folder is using up too much space
  • How to remove the files from this directory to clear up some space

Environment

  • N-able N-central
  • Patch Management

Solution

  • First, the patch cache archive on an agent is designed to intentionally retain recently installed patch data in case it is needed again in the near future.
    • This helps prevent issues where a user might accidentally install a patch, or a patch registers as successful but during reboot is rolled back by Windows due to a problem during finalization, and so on.
    • This process means that a relatively small amount of cache space can be consumed on the local disk, but prevents the need to consume internet or network bandwidth to re-download a patch potentially several times.
    • After a patch is installed it is purged from the local cache archive after 30 days.
  • The Windows Agent uses the Archive directory because this is where it temporarily downloads the patches, either from the probe cache or external sources
  • Once the patches have been installed successfully, then the files will be removed
    • NOTE: There is no way to set the maximum size of this directory
  • If you would like to clear the contents, please do the following:
  1. Locally, navigate to services.msc
  2. Stop the Windows Agent and Windows Agent Maintenance services
  3. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\N-able Technologies\Windows Agent\Patch Management\Archive
  4. Delete all of the contents from the directory
  5. Restart the Windows Agent and Windows Agent Maintenance services
    • NOTE: The Windows Agent will re-download any approved patches that have not yet been installed