Copy most recent file from folder to destination - powershell

Question

I need some assistance with powershell . My experience is very limited as I'm a sql server dba. What I am currently doing is migrating databases across from 2000 to 2008. I want to automate the .bak copy from source to destination so I don't need to go into each folder and copy and then paste. So let me give the picture. The source directory has folders a b c d. I want the script to read from each folder or ideally specify the folder names and get the most recent
.Bak full backup by date and copy to a destination. The destination will have the same folders so folder a's backup copied to destination folder a will be great. Afterwards I want to do the same but change my search from full backup search to differential. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

This is how I would address it. The variables for folderpath and destination path are the root folders and the variable for childfolders list out each folder to search.
Clear-Host
$ChildFolders = #('A', 'B')
for($i = 0; $i -lt $ChildFolders.Count; $i++){
$FolderPath = "D:\BackupSource\" + $ChildFolders[$i]
$DestinationPath = "D:\BackupDestination\" + $ChildFolders[$i]
gci -Path $FolderPath -File | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending | Select FullName -First 1 | %($_){
$_.FullName
Copy-Item $_.FullName -Destination $DestinationPath
}
}

Answer 2

Given this structure, meaning all folders exist.
├───destination
│ ├───A
│ └───B
└───source
├───A
└───B
You can do the following:
$folders = #('A', 'B')
$source = 'source'
$destination = 'destination'
$filter = '*.bak'
$folders | foreach {
$source_path = [io.path]::combine($source, $_)
$destination_path = [io.path]::combine($destination, $_)
gci $source_path -File -Filter $filter | sort -Property LastWriteTime -Descending |
Select -first 1 | copy -Destination $destination_path
}
It gets all files matching your filter, sorts them in descending order by LastWriteTime, picks the newest and copies it to your destination.