Delete Files Older Than X Days on Windows

command-line-interfacewindows

What's a good Windows command line option for deleting all files in a given folder older than (n) days?

Also note there may be many thousands of these files, so forfiles with a shell to cmd is not a great idea here.. unless you like spawning thousands of command shells. I consider that a pretty nasty hack, so let's see if we can do better!

Ideally, something built into (or easily installable into) Windows Server 2008.

Best Answer

I looked around a bit more and found a powershell way:

Delete all files more than 8 days old from the specified folder (with preview)

dir |? {$_.CreationTime -lt (get-date).AddDays(-8)} | del -whatif

(remove the -whatif to make it happen)

Related Solutions

Windows – Transfer files older than N days with WinSCP

Use a file mask with a time constraint:

Upload:
```
put C:\local\path\*.*<5D /remote/path/
```
Download:
```
get /remote/path/*.*<5D C:\local\path\
```

Windows – How to delete files older than 30 days with robocopy

I don't know how to do it with robocopy, but when I wanted to do the same as what you're doing, I put this line in my batch file:

forfiles -p %_BACKUPPATH% -m *.rar -d -3 -c "cmd /c del @path"

A dissection is:

forfiles - The program for filtering the files
-p %_BACKUPPATH% - -p indicates "path" (mine is %_BACKUPPATH% but you can replace this with a "real" path), otherwise it uses the current directory
-m *.rar - filter by filetype .rar, skip this parameter for *.*
-d -3 - Only affect files older than 3 days (-3)
-c "cmd /c del @path" - anything after the -c is what will be executed for each file it finds, in this case, del.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Transfer files older than N days with WinSCP

Windows – How to delete files older than 30 days with robocopy

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