PowerShell – Delete files based on “LastAccessTime”

powershell

I'm trying to run a command that is supposed to delete anything with the "LastAccessTime" older than 30 days. However, when I run it, it just modifies the LastAccessTime and doesn't delete. Command is below.

Get-ChildItem '\servername\share\folder in the share' | ?{$.LastAccessTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-30)} | ?{!$.psiscontainer} | Remove-Item

The account I'm running this as has access to the share, including delete access (tested this manually). If I take out | Remove-Item and change the days to be older than 1 day, it returns the files. Should I use something other than Remove-Item?

Best Answer

Please avoid using aliases in your script here on serverfault, as they decrease the readability of scripts.

Apart from that, your missing some underscores, I'm guessing your script should read:

Get-ChildItem '\servername\share\folder in the share' | where {$_.LastAccessTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-30)} | where {!$_.psiscontainer} | Remove-Item

Related Solutions

Powershell – How to avoid Remove-Item PowerShell errors “process cannot access the file”

Late, but someone might find this useful.

In an automation script, I recurse through processes to find any that is using the path of the directory I want to delete, and kill them.

Sometimes other apps might be locking a file, so I used process explorer to find handle/dll. If is ok to kill the app, I add the kill to the script.

Then remove the dir.

        get-process | foreach{
          $pName = $_
          if ( $pName.Path -like ( $INSTALL_PATH + '*') ) {
            Stop-Process $pName.id -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
          }
        }
       Remove-Item  -Force -Recurse $INSTALL_PATH

Powershell script to delete sub folders and files if creation date is >7 days but maintain parent folders of sub folders and files <7 days old

May I suggest a slightly different approach? I'd delete all files older than 7 days first, and in a second step delete empty folders. Something like this:

$deleted = @()

Get-ChildItem $dump_path -Recurse | Where-Object {
  -not $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.CreationTime -lt $del_date
} | ForEach-Object {
  $deleted += $_.FullName
  $_
} | Remove-Item

function Remove-EmptyFolders($folder) {
  Get-ChildItem $folder | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer } | ForEach-Object {
    $path = $_.FullName
    Remove-Emptyfolders $path
    if ( @(Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse | Where-Object { -not $_.PSIsContainer}).Length -eq 0 ) {
      $deleted += $path
      Remove-Item $path -Recurse -Force
    }
  }
}

Remove-EmptyFolders $dump_path

$html = $deleted | Select-Object @{Name='Path';Expression={$_}} | ConvertTo-Html

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Powershell – How to avoid Remove-Item PowerShell errors “process cannot access the file”

Powershell script to delete sub folders and files if creation date is >7 days but maintain parent folders of sub folders and files <7 days old

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