I'm pretty new to Powershell in general, I've come across some partial solutions, but I can't find the right fit.
Ideally I would like to Archive (Zip) with Powershell but only files of a certain age (x days/months), but I would prefer keeping the folder structure and also add exclusions.
Here's what I've been trying to use (without success):
$inputFolder = "C:\Temp\Test"
$excludeFolders = #("\subfolderToKeep")
$ouputFileName="C:\Temp\archive.zip"
$Daysback = "-5"
$CurrentDate = Get-Date
$DatetoDelete = $CurrentDate.AddDays($Daysback)
$tempFolder = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempFileName()
Remove-Item $tempFolder -Force
New-Item -Type Directory -Path $tempFolder -Force
$exclude =#()
$excludeFolders | ForEach-Object {
$exclude+=(Join-Path $inputFolder $_)
Get-ChildItem (Join-Path $inputFolder $_) -Recurse |
ForEach-Object{$exclude+=$_.FullName}}
Get-ChildItem $inputFolder -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.FullName -notin $exclude -and $_.LastWriteTime -lt $DatetoDelete } |
Copy-Item -Destination {Join-Path $tempFolder $_.FullName.Substring($inputFolder.length)}
Get-ChildItem $tempFolder |
Compress-Archive -DestinationPath $ouputFileName -Update
The current setup would work without the date filtering:
-and $_.LastWriteTime -lt $DatetoDelete
I'm trying to fix the following scenario:
I have directory which has multiple subdirectories and files where I need to set something like retention policy, by default I would set to have files no older than 365 days where there are some special directories where I would like to keep for a different period of time other than my default value. These directories are specified in a txt file with the following syntax
Content of Drive:\Path\to\special_dirs.txt
D:\Path\to\vendor1 -396
D:\Path\to\vendor2 -45
This is what I have come up so far (It is working on the special directories only, the next part where I want to proceed with the rest does not work):
# Script to remove old files from Archive: D:\Path\to
# Declaring variables to be used
$controlfile = "Drive:\Path\to\list\special_dirs.txt"
$dir = "D:\Path\to"
$default_days = "-365"
$excluded_dirs = Get-Content $controlfile | Foreach-Object {$_.Split()[0]}
foreach ($line in Get-Content $controlfile) {
$split = $line.split(" ")
$file_path = $split[0]
$max_days = $split[1]
Get-ChildItem $file_path -Include *.* -File -Recurse | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($max_days))} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -Verbose -WhatIf
}
# Removing everything else older than 365 days old
Get-ChildItem -Path $dir -Include *.* -File -Recurse -Directory -Exclude $excluded_dirs | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt $curr_date.AddDays($default_days))} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -Verbose -WhatIf
I'm not looking to remove directories even if they are empty, I just want to remove files, the last part of the script just deletes everything older than 365 day where there is a directory that I would like to keep 30 days more than the default period of time, any ideas on how to get this done?
I used the file list so that I can keep adding directories to vendors where I can keep longer than or even less than the default days.
What about something like this?..
$30DayDirs = #('C:\Temp\Test1\','C:\Temp\Test2\')
$60DayDirs = #('C:\Temp\Test3\')
$365DayDirs = #('C:\Temp\Test4\')
foreach($file in $30DayDirs){
$file = Get-ChildItem $30DayDirs -Recurse |where LastWriteTime -LT (Get-Date).AddDays(-30)
Remove-Item $file.FullName -Force -Recurse
}
foreach($file in $60DayDirs){
$file = Get-ChildItem $60DayDirs -Recurse |where LastWriteTime -LT (Get-Date).AddDays(-60)
Remove-Item $file.FullName -Force -Recurse
}
foreach($file in $365DayDirs){
$file = Get-ChildItem $365DayDirs -Recurse |where LastWriteTime -LT (Get-Date).AddDays(-365)
Remove-Item $file.FullName -Force -Recurse
}
I have fixed my issue with the following:
# Script to remove old files from DFS Archive: D:\Path\to
# Declaring variables to be used
$controlfile = "Drive:\Path\to\list\special_dirs.txt"
$dir = "D:\Path\to"
$default_days = "-365"
$excluded_dirs = Get-Content $controlfile | Foreach-Object {$_.Split()[0]}
# Removing old files from special directories first
cd $dir
foreach ($line in Get-Content $controlfile) {
$split = $line.split(" ")
$file_path = $split[0]
$max_days = $split[1]
Get-ChildItem $file_path -Include *.* -File -Recurse | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($max_days))} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -Verbose
}
# Removing everything else older than 365 days old
Get-ChildItem $dir -Directory -Exclude $excluded_dirs | Get-ChildItem -Include *.* -File -Recurse | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($default_days))} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -Verbose
And I have modified my special_dirs.txt file to:
vendor1 -396
vendor2 -45
Trying to get a script working that can copy files that are 45 days old to a new network location, verify they copied and then delete those files from the original location. Any help is greatly appreciated
This will get all child items in a folder (Folders and Files) Get-ChildItem Recurse
Select Items older then 45 days $_LastWriteTime -lt (get-date).AddDays(-45)
Move them to a new location move-item -destination
Remove the old items Remove-Item
get-childitem -Path "C:\HERE" -Recurse | where-object {$_.LastWriteTime -lt (get-date).AddDays(-45)} | move-item -destination "\D:\THERE" | Remove-Item
UPDATE 8/12/2017
Added Verify that the file was moved before delete. if(Test-Path $Destination$($_.Name))
$Source = "C:\Source\"
$Destination = "D:\Destination\"
get-childitem -Path "C:\Source\" -Recurse | where-object {$_.LastWriteTime -lt (get-date).AddDays(-45)} | move-item -destination "D:\Destination\" -force | ForEach-Object{
if(Test-Path $Destination$($_.Name)){
Remove-Item $_ -Force
}
}
UPDATE 8/14/2017
All in one line
get-childitem -Path "C:\Source\" -Recurse | where-object {$_.LastWriteTime -lt (get-date).AddDays(-45)} | move-item -destination "D:\Destination\" -force | ForEach-Object{ if(Test-Path $Destination$($_.Name)){Remove-Item $_ -Force}}
I wrote a simple script that will run as a scheduled task every weekend. This script cleans up files older than # days and you can give the name of a folder for exclusion as a parameter. This folder should not be cleaned up by the script. But somehow the script still deletes some files from the excluded folder. But in a strange way no files matching the conditions of the parameter.
For example I run the script to delete files older than 15 days and exclude the folder NOCLEANUP. but some files still get deleted from that folder, but there are still files older than 15 days in the NOCLEANUP folder.
Code below
Thanks in advance and apologies for the dirty code. Still new to PS.
Function CleanDir ($dir, $days, $exclude, $logpath)
{
$Limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-$days)
$Path = $dir
#Folder to exclude
$ToExclude = $exclude
#Log location
$Log= $logpath
$Testpath = Test-Path -PathType Container -Path $Log
if ($Testpath -ne $true)
{
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $Log
}
#Logs deleted files
cd $Log
Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.LastwriteTime -lt $Limit } | Where-Object { $_.fullname -notmatch $ToExclude} | Where-Object { $_.fullname -notmatch '$RECYCLE.BIN'} | Out-File -FilePath CLEANUPLOG.TXT
# Delete files older than the $Limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.LastwriteTime -lt $Limit } | Where-Object { $_.fullname -notlike $ToExclude} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
#Goes into every folder separately and deletes all empty subdirectorys without deleting the root folders.
$Folder = Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Directory
$Folder.fullname | ForEach-Object
{
Get-ChildItem -Path $_ -Recurse -Force | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True} | Where-Object {$_.GetFiles().Count -eq 0} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
}
}
I would like to delete only the files that were created more than 15 days ago in a particular folder. How could I do this using PowerShell?
The given answers will only delete files (which admittedly is what is in the title of this post), but here's some code that will first delete all of the files older than 15 days, and then recursively delete any empty directories that may have been left behind. My code also uses the -Force option to delete hidden and read-only files as well. Also, I chose to not use aliases as the OP is new to PowerShell and may not understand what gci, ?, %, etc. are.
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
$path = "C:\Some\Path"
# Delete files older than the $limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit } | Remove-Item -Force
# Delete any empty directories left behind after deleting the old files.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer -and (Get-ChildItem -Path $_.FullName -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer }) -eq $null } | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
And of course if you want to see what files/folders will be deleted before actually deleting them, you can just add the -WhatIf switch to the Remove-Item cmdlet call at the end of both lines.
If you only want to delete files that haven't been updated in 15 days, vs. created 15 days ago, then you can use $_.LastWriteTime instead of $_.CreationTime.
The code shown here is PowerShell v2.0 compatible, but I also show this code and the faster PowerShell v3.0 code as handy reusable functions on my blog.
just simply (PowerShell V5)
Get-ChildItem "C:\temp" -Recurse -File | Where CreationTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-15) | Remove-Item -Force
Another way is to subtract 15 days from the current date and compare CreationTime against that value:
$root = 'C:\root\folder'
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
Get-ChildItem $root -Recurse | ? {
-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit
} | Remove-Item
Basically, you iterate over files under the given path, subtract the CreationTime of each file found from the current time, and compare against the Days property of the result. The -WhatIf switch will tell you what will happen without actually deleting the files (which files will be deleted), remove the switch to actually delete the files:
$old = 15
$now = Get-Date
Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse |
Where-Object {-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $now.Subtract($_.CreationTime).Days -gt $old } |
Remove-Item -WhatIf
Try this:
dir C:\PURGE -recurse |
where { ((get-date)-$_.creationTime).days -gt 15 } |
remove-item -force
Esperento57's script doesn't work in older PowerShell versions. This example does:
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\temp" -Recurse -force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | where {($_.LastwriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-15) ) -and (! $_.PSIsContainer)} | select name| Remove-Item -Verbose -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
If you are having problems with the above examples on a Windows 10 box, try replacing .CreationTime with .LastwriteTime. This worked for me.
dir C:\locationOfFiles -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where { ((Get-Date)-$_.LastWriteTime).days -gt 15 } | Remove-Item -Force
Another alternative (15. gets typed to [timespan] automatically):
ls -file | where { (get-date) - $_.creationtime -gt 15. } | Remove-Item -Verbose
#----- Define parameters -----#
#----- Get current date ----#
$Now = Get-Date
$Days = "15" #----- define amount of days ----#
$Targetfolder = "C:\Logs" #----- define folder where files are located ----#
$Extension = "*.log" #----- define extension ----#
$Lastwrite = $Now.AddDays(-$Days)
#----- Get files based on lastwrite filter and specified folder ---#
$Files = Get-Childitem $Targetfolder -include $Extension -Recurse | where {$_.LastwriteTime -le "$Lastwrite"}
foreach ($File in $Files)
{
if ($File -ne $Null)
{
write-host "Deleting File $File" backgroundcolor "DarkRed"
Remove-item $File.Fullname | out-null
}
else {
write-host "No more files to delete" -forgroundcolor "Green"
}
}
$limit = (Get-Date).AddDays(-15)
$path = "C:\Some\Path"
# Delete files older than the $limit.
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $limit } | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
This will delete old folders and it content.
The following code will delete files older than 15 days in a folder.
$Path = 'C:\Temp'
$Daysback = "-15"
$CurrentDate = Get-Date
$DatetoDelete = $CurrentDate.AddDays($Daysback)
Get-ChildItem $Path -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -lt $DatetoDelete } | Remove-Item