This didn’t really work too well for me unless I used the FullName property of the $File object, and used a -recurse option on the Remove-Item cmdlet, like so:

foreach ($File in $Files) {
Remove-Item $File.FullName -recurse
}

These were problems for me because:

a) the working directory for my script was c:\bin, but my target directory was c:\tmp. So what was happening was I’d get an error on each call to Remove-Item, saying that c:\bin\ did not exist. The $File.FullName fixed that problem, FullName contains the full path to the file to be deleted.

b) Without the -recurse option on Remove-Item, you get a prompt asking you if you’re sure you want to remove the directory (if the target is a directory). This is a larger problem in that the parent folder may have an older modify date than it’s children folder, and unfortunately this script will simply delete the parent and all sub-children blindly, even if a new file is located in a sub-child directory. Not good in general cases but for my c:\tmp dir I can live with it.

Worked perfectly as described, thanks very much!

get-childitem | where -FilterScript {$_.LastWriteTime -le [System.DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-7)} | remove-item

Thank you.

I just added a condition to check that the file is not null.
foreach ($File in $Files) {
#Check for null
if ($file -ne $NULL){
#write-host “Deleting Transaction LOG: $File” -foregroundcolor “Red”;
Remove-Item $File | out-null
}
}

Great stuff! Thank you

Guys,

This will not work for remote computers. Admins need to manage multiple computers. Below is the script that can be used to delete folders in multiple remote computers without having tio login to them.

Below script will delete folders older than 15 days. you can change the $days parameter though

D$\Program Files (x86)\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logs is the UNC path for Blackberry Log folder. You can change the directory where your logs/folders are located.

list all your servername is servers.txt file and it should located in the same directory as this script.

#============Begin of the Script=======================

cd C:\Scripts\Powershellscripts\deletefiles —-> change it to the directory you wanna out this script to

$Days = “15”
$Now = Get-Date
$LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$days)
$server = get-content servers.txt
foreach ($node in $server)
{
get-childitem -recurse “\\$node\D$\Program Files (x86)\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logs” | Where-Object {$_.LastWriteTime -le $LastWrite} | remove-item -recurse -force
}

#========End of the Script=================

save the script as .ps1 and run it… You can schedule it via batch file… That why you need to add Change Directory command at the beginning of the script..

Have fun..

Hi,
I need to clear out directories that contains 500k+ files in them…
By using get-childitem -recurse it really takes its time…. (Stopped it after two hours…)
With nothing deleted…

Are there any faster ways?

First off, Ivan thank you for a great and simple post. Worked for me perfectly.

@VJ, not sure what you’re talking about. I just used this script against a remote system (using UNC path) and managed to delete over 700GB of old transaction log backup files without an issue.

@Wandrag – I had the same issue (Jorge… you likely have large files, but not that many of them… that is a key difference). The problem is that Get-ChildItem returns a full object for each file that you are enumerating in the folder. Thus, with 500k, you are requesting a lot of information.

The solution is to NOT use Get-ChildItem and use [io.directoryinfo]

Try this: (NOTE: AS IS and scrapped together from a known working script of mine… the idea is valid if it doesn’t work 🙂 )
######## COPY START ########
$SrcFolder = “\\your.path\to\lots\of\files\” #can be any type of directory
$Fileage = -14 #Number of days you want to RETAIN (ie it will delete files older than this many days)

#set up directory info
[io.directoryinfo]$dir = $SrcFolder

#Get the files that are older than your $fileage
$FileCol = ($dir.GetFiles() | Where {$_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($Fileage)})

#If your source folder may contain subfolders use:
#Where {!$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($Fileage)})

#if you want a progress bar (when running interactively) uncomment the following two lines
#$i=1
#$Files2Remove = $FileCol.Count

#Get your files
Foreach($File in $FileCol)
{
#if you want a progress bar uncomment the following line
#Write-Progress -Activity “Removing files older than $([system.Math]::Abs($Fileage)) days” -id 1 -status (“Files Processed $i of “+$Files2Remove.ToString()) -percentComplete ($i / $Files2Remove*100)

if(test-path $File.FullName)
{
remove-item -path $File.FullName -Force -WhatIf #Comment the -Whatif to actually remove the files
}
#if you want a progress bar uncomment the following line
#$i++
}
######## COPY END ########

Hope that works better for you… with 500k files nothing is going to be all that speedy.

If you’d like a quick comparison test (between gci and io.directoryinfo) run these to get your file count:
[io.directoryinfo]$dir = $SrcFolder
measure-command {$dir.getFiles()).count}

Measure-command {(Get-ChildItem $SrcFolder).Count} #you may have to kill this one after a while, but you should get the idea that it is slower. 🙂

This is great. thanks. I modified it for my own purposes, of course. Love the suggestion about the -whatif flag.

Thanks this was a great help.
I was also wondering, since I am new to PS, does anybody have idea as to how to move files from a dynamically retrieved folder list to a list of correpsonding folders on a network location.

@Rob,
not being an expert, but when the @SKYE’s script runs, it returns a collection. That collection could be sorted, then sliced to return all the “other” files. You’d have to check the range and then slice it accordingly. You would then erase the files you in the modified/sliced collection.

for a very gross example:

[io.directoryinfo]$x="c:\"
$xn=$x.GetFiles()
$xn_sorted = $xn | Sort-Object -property LastWriteTime -Descending
#To select items 5 through end of the list
$xn_sorted[4..$xn_sorted.Length]


I hope this helps

thanks a lot guyz..

Hi All !
This is a really handy script. What I am looking for is a slight variation I believe. I have a number of folders all of which contain files. I need to check the folder and each file in the folder for the LastWriteTime. If the file is older than 14 days then move that file to an archive folder with the same folder structure. I then need to loop through the remaining folders. I currently have a script this script.
#Powershell Script to delete files older than a certain age
foreach($File in $Folders)
{
#age of files in days
$intFileAge = 14
#path to clean up
$strFilePath = “F:\Scripts\Paygate”
#Set the destination of where the files move to
$PathToGo = “F:\Scripts\Paygate\Archive”

#create filter to exclude folders and files newer than specified age
Filter Select-FileAge {
param($days)
If ($_.PSisContainer) {}
# Exclude folders from result set
ElseIf ($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($days * -1))
{$_}
}
$a = get-Childitem -recurse $strFilePath | Select-FileAge $intFileAge ‘CreationTime’

foreach($b in $a)
{
##move-item $b.fullname $PathToGo
Echo “Moving $b to $PathToGo”
}

}

Any help would be great
Many Thanks

Hi I need small help i liked your script but i need to exclude some folders and files under it how can i do that i tried like below but its not working
——————

$Now = Get-Date

$Days = “7”

$TargetFolder = “C:\amit”

$Extension = “*.txt”

$LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$Days)

$Fldrexclude = “webserver” # Want to exclude this folder and files in it

$Files = Get-Childitem $TargetFolder -Include $Extension -Recurse |

Where {$_.LastWriteTime -le “$LastWrite”}

Where {$_.name -ne $Fldrexclude}

foreach ($File in $Files)
{
if ($File -ne $NULL)
{
write-host “Deleting File $File” -ForegroundColor “Yellow”
Remove-Item $File.FullName | out-null
}
else
{
Write-Host “No more files to delete!” -foregroundcolor “Green”
}
}

pls help

hi All,
function new-zipfile {
param ($zipfile)
if (!$zipfile.endswith(‘.zip’)) {$zipfile += ‘.zip’}
set-content $zipfile (“PK” + [char]5 + [char]6 + (“$([char]0)” * 18))
(dir $zipfile).IsReadOnly = $false
}
#define variables here
$thismonthint = get-date -f “MM”
$prevmonthint = (get-date).addmonths(-1).tostring(“MM”)
$thismonthstr = get-date -f “MMM”
$prevmonthstr = (get-date).addmonths(-1).tostring(“MMM”)
$thisyearlongint = get-date -f “yyyy”
$thisyearshortint = get-date -f “yy”
$thislogdir = ‘C:\rad\’
$thiszipfile = $thislogdir + $prevmonthstr + $thisyearlongint + ‘.zip’
$zipexists = test-path $thiszipfile
$Days = “30”
$Now = Get-Date
$Extension = “*.log”
$LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$Days)
#$files = dir $thislogdir -Recurse -Include $mask | where {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-$days).AddHours(-$hours).AddMinutes(-$mins))
#start program here
#first pass, check for .zip files of previous months. if exists exit. if not exist, create empty .zip file
if (! $zipexists)
{
echo ‘zip file does not exist, creating zip file’
new-zipfile $thiszipfile
}
else
{
echo ‘zip already exists’
}
# move all log files where the month number matches the month number of the .zip file
# Jan = 01, Feb = 02, Mar =03 etc. etc.
$file=0;
foreach($file in Get-ChildItem $thislogdir -Include $Extension -Recurse | Where {$_.LastWriteTime -le “$LastWrite”})
{
# exclude the .zip files already in the directory (just in case we get a random month match in their filename
if (! $file.name.endswith(“.zip”))
{
$zipfile = New-Object -ComObject shell.application
$zipPackage = $zipfile.NameSpace($thiszipfile)
#$zipPackage = $ZipFile.NameSpace($zipfilename)
$zipPackage.MoveHere($file.fullname)

}

}

with this script i am not able to compress the log files with mentioned date. Please help

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Guys , 

Need a help am trying to create a powershell script that can pick files from last 25hrs and zip it 

I ahve tried long tool path. it works 100%

Hey Ren,

Use robocopy (CMD) for transfer files

> robocopy.exe \\source \\destination /move /copyall