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We're looking for opportunities to clear up some disk space on a Windows 2019 server. We're running SQL Server on this instance as well. I see that I may be able to free up 10GB if we clean out the following directories. My question is, is it safe to delete these files without having a negative impact on SQL Server?

  • C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Setup Bootstrap\Log\*

  • C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Setup Bootstrap\Update Cache\*

  • C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Setup Bootstrap\Log\*

  • C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Setup Bootstrap\Update Cache\*

Also, if it's not already obvious, I'm not familiar with SQL Server management. When I search "SQL Server" from the Microsoft OS start menu, I see 3 folders that show up in the search results. They are for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2014, Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and Microsoft SQL Server Tools 18.

Could we potentially free up space by deleting the directories for 2008 and 2014?

Thank you.

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    I see you're "risking" the deletion of important files to free up 10Gb of space. That fact and your remark about not being familiar with the management of SQL Server makes me wonder: 1) are your databases residing on drive C sharing space with Windows? 2) are your databases configured as Full Recovery Mode causing the log files to grow indefinitely due to the absence of a routine of log backups? Because if that's the case, you're looking on the wrong place to free up space.
    – Ronaldo
    Commented Jun 24, 2022 at 15:09

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According to learn.microsoft.com you should not delete the Update Cache folder. As for the Log folder I'd say that you can delete it as long as you do not need the logs stored there.

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    Thanks for sharing this link. It answers my first question. As for the second question, we've decided to leave the older instances of SQL server alone.
    – Gregg
    Commented Jun 24, 2022 at 16:42
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    @Gregg If you're not using the other SQL Server instances, you should just uninstall them.
    – J.D.
    Commented Jun 25, 2022 at 0:39

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