Our scenario was that we wanted to upgrade our WSUS running on Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2012 R2 and changing the database to WID. The database wasn’t that important for us, as all computers placed in one group where all patches are approved. But we wanted to keep the content of 800 Gigabyte without redownloading all that stuff.
A huge advantage is if you have the data on a seperate drive or partition. Before you start, shutdown the WSUS Service and rename the WsusContent folder or move it to a different location.
Then you’re good to go. Reinstall or setup a new machine and install WSUS. During the initial configuration wizard its important that you choose “synchronize manually” and do not trigger a sync before or at the end of the wizard. Then copy the previous saved WsusContent folder to the location you’ve chosen in the wizard and replace everything. After that you can manually start your synchronization and WSUS is reindexing the whole content without downloading a huge amount of data. It should take around 3-4 hours, depending on your hardware and disk. You can see the status on synchronization tab.
Good luck!
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