Monday, 9 January 2012

http://forums.devshed.com/showpost.php?p=2072796&postcount=17

Delete Files Older Than Date Using Batch Files


This problem has nagged at me for years. Here is a batch command to delete files on a Windows 2003 machine.

forfiles -p z:\backup -s -m *.* -d -3 -c "cmd /c del /q @path"
This will delete all files in my backup directory older than 3 days. To test it first, use this:

forfiles -p z:\backup -s -m *.* -d -3 -c "cmd /C Echo 0x22@Path\@File0x22"
This will print out each file that you will be deleting


This came in handy for deleting my old Macrium Reflect backups which were created using it's Duplicate facility, I didn't want to use their suggestion of robocopy, as my initial backup is over the network and I didn't want to drag it all back again!  Thanks erijas!