I have been using SCCM 2012 for over a year now and have jsut noticed that all of the content in my original source folders has been deleted. I am trying to redistribute this missing content with no luck, mainly because it doesnt exist anymore.

I have two questions.

1. How do I change the cleanup of the source content folder

2. How do I re-download software updates to redistribute once the source content gets deleted.

Has anyone else had this problem?

• Edited by Elvis P. Johnson Thursday, June 27, 2013 5:57 PM

Great. My entire microsoft update package disapeared from the source directory, now I cant push out any updates since missing and i have no way of downloading it again.

Hi,

You're not able to redownload your updates from the All Software Updates view?

Have you found a solutions for that? And found what has deleted your sources?

Perhaps it was this:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2012/04/12/software-update-content-cleanup-in-system-center-2012-configuration-manager.aspx

I have not figured out a solution to stop config manager from deleting my source content. I have merely begun to keep my source files in a folder that SCCM doesn't maintain. So I will essentially have to keep double the drive space I had planned to store my source files.

Mike: its not all about updates its also my source content, like OS's, Offce installs, Java, Adobe, anything else. 

Yes, it is automatically getting deleted by an SCCM maintenance task, that much i figured. If I want to re-deploy any package after 7 days, I have to hunt down the source files again and extract them to the SCCM source folder.

It's sad really, since many of my source packages are custom installs or installation snapshots that take time to create. 

That's definitely odd, I've yet to run into that problem myself. I've had some source content not change for well over a year and it's still there.

How did you determine that a maintenance task is deleting content?

This is a fresh install with no other apps other than the installation prerequisites for SCCM. There are no tasks running in task scheduler that would do this. I am the only person who touches these boxes. 

After reading the above posted link a while back I came to the conclusion that SCCM was deleting it and that I would have to live with it until I could find a way to change it. As far is ive seen, there is no way to manage maintenance tasks\schedules in SCCM.

Maintenance tasks can be configured / enabled / disabled, but I am not aware of a built-in mechanism that would delete files. Where are those files stored? In a local custom folder? Are there driver packages? When are they deleted? At a specific point of time or after doing "something" in the console or completely random?

The path to the folder is D:\SCCM\Source

Any package or application that uses that path for "source files" gets deleted within a few days after initial deployment. Drivers, updates and full apps get deleted. The only files that do not get deleted from that folder are files I copy manually into myself. Anything that SC copy's there get deleted automatically eventually.

Is ConfigMgr installed to D:\sccm?

I must be missing something, but it is always the admin that has to copy source files to whatever location. ConfigMgr or the console is not involved in this. It is just copying files using Windows Explorer. IOW ConfigMgr does not add anything to source files automatically (exception: adding/downloading updates using an ADR).

ConfigMgr is installed to d:\zz_SCCM

I meant that the files that I copy to that folder that dont get designated as "source content" in SCCM will not get deleted. Anything designated as "source content" gets eventually removed.

FYI - I realise this is an old topic, but I'm having the same problem. I have started a new topic for my issue though and am currently discussing with MS Support.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/3ac88d59-d1b5-4826-a44d-bb94bfd80f66/configmgr-2012-update-source-content-deleted?forum=configmanagergeneral

If anyone is experiencing this or similar issues, can I ask... did you use the Migration function at any time at all? e.g. did you create a task that migrated your packages from/to another hierarchy or primary and this one?

If so, is that other primary still running?

Yes, I know this is an old post, but Im trying to clean them up. Did you solve this problem, if so what was the solution?

Since no one has answer this post, I recommend opening  a support case with Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) as they can work with you to solve this problem.

I had this same issue that was due to two different configmgr servers using the same source location. When the cleanup task happened on one server, it would remove any source content that wasn't part of a deployment. This would then cause the other server to have problems if it was expecting that content to still be present.

So are there two different ConfigMgr environments present (e.g. dev and prod, old and new?) and are you using a migration job to copy configurations between them? When you migrate packages it leaves the source location the same on both.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/3ac88d59-d1b5-4826-a44d-bb94bfd80f66/configmgr-2012-update-source-content-deleted?forum=configmanagergeneral

For anyone else searching this problem, I've had this happen a few times and believe I've found the reason.

In my case, I have a deployment package with a "content source location" that is on my applications share.

I also have application deployments with source files in a subfolder of that location. 

So - I have a folder Applications\Adobe Flash Player, which is the content source for a deployment package and also contains some other files.

I also have Applications\Adobe Flash Player\17, which is the content source for an application deployment.

I've noticed that repeatedly the 17 subfolder is deleted from Applications\Adobe Flash Player. The GUID-named subfolders containing the software update content are not deleted, nor are the other files in Adobe Flash Player.

The 17 subfolder is deleted by the SYSTEM account. I am still testing as the delete behavior is not yet reproducible, but I suspect my issue is similar to that described below (answer excerpted from link).

"My problem involved software updates.  Software updates were configured by my coworker to download and they pointed the content to download to the root of the share which ended up deleting all source content.  I went under Deployment Packages and selected to display the Package Source Path.  This revealed a package was pointing to the root.  Made a change to the package to point it to another folder within the software updates folder we have and that cleared the problem."

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9077-my-content-is-deleting-itself/

• Proposed as answer by Kerwin MedinaMicrosoft employee 5 hours 52 minutes ago

For anyone else searching this problem, I've had this happen a few times and believe I've found the reason.

In my case, I have a deployment package with a "content source location" that is on my applications share.

I also have application deployments with source files in a subfolder of that location. 

So - I have a folder Applications\Adobe Flash Player, which is the content source for a deployment package and also contains some other files.

I also have Applications\Adobe Flash Player\17, which is the content source for an application deployment.

I've noticed that repeatedly the 17 subfolder is deleted from Applications\Adobe Flash Player. The GUID-named subfolders containing the software update content are not deleted, nor are the other files in Adobe Flash Player.

The 17 subfolder is deleted by the SYSTEM account. I am still testing as the delete behavior is not yet reproducible, but I suspect my issue is similar to that described below (answer excerpted from link).

"My problem involved software updates.  Software updates were configured by my coworker to download and they pointed the content to download to the root of the share which ended up deleting all source content.  I went under Deployment Packages and selected to display the Package Source Path.  This revealed a package was pointing to the root.  Made a change to the package to point it to another folder within the software updates folder we have and that cleared the problem."

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9077-my-content-is-deleting-itself/

• Proposed as answer by Kerwin MedinaMicrosoft employee Saturday, June 06, 2015 1:55 AM

Thanks - was seeing this in my environment and was causing me a real headache!  All resolved now.