No one seems to have posted this explicitly, and I ended up having to ask someone at Microsoft to find out.
The files in softwaredistribution/download are deleted 10 days after the patch is installed. If you know the patch is installed, you can go ahead and manually delete the files (and folders).
This was an issue for me as we just upgraded two servers from Windows 2000 to 2003. In doing so we had a lot of patches to install right off the bat and that left a lot of data in that download folder.
The files in softwaredistribution/download are deleted 10 days after the patch is installed. If you know the patch is installed, you can go ahead and manually delete the files (and folders).
This was an issue for me as we just upgraded two servers from Windows 2000 to 2003. In doing so we had a lot of patches to install right off the bat and that left a lot of data in that download folder.