How can I delete files older than x days?

Question

I want to delete files older than x days, 5 in the below example. I tried to use below, but its not working nor its throwing an error.

 Get-ChildItem –Path  “E:\del” –Recurse | Where-Object{$_.CreationTime –lt(Get-Date).AddDays(-5)} | Remove-Item

Are you really sure you have version 1 and not getting confused about the directory it resides in: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1825585/determine-installed-powershell-version? — Matt, Mar 27 '17 at 12:38
@Clijsters _nor its throwing an error_ that would tell me the `Where-object` clause is not working as he expected. — Matt, Mar 27 '17 at 12:39
So when you run this: `Get-ChildItem –Path "E:\del" –Recurse | select name, creationtime` that you are seeing files with a create date of older than 5 days? — Matt, Mar 27 '17 at 12:41
@Matt, got Major 2 , so i have powershell 2 , thanks, does the above script work in version 2 please? — MP Martis, Mar 27 '17 at 12:41
@Matt yes its giving files older than 5 days when i run the command given by you — MP Martis, Mar 27 '17 at 12:43
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28143476/windows-batch-file-to-delete-text-files-older-than-x-days — Mihail Kuznesov, Mar 27 '17 at 12:51
It worked , i had mistaken creation time with lastModified time, i was copying old files from a old folder to a test folder which made creation time of old files to today's date, Got where i was wrong after seeing output of `Get-ChildItem –Path "E:\del" –Recurse | select name, creationtime` , thanks for the help. — MP Martis, Mar 27 '17 at 12:58
Ok then. So your code was working but you were filtering on the wrong properties and getting different results than expected. . — Matt, Mar 27 '17 at 13:28

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '17 at 13:12

Here is an approach you could take.

$Path = E:\del
$DaysBack = "-5" 
$CurrentDate = Get-Date
$DatetoDelete = $CurrentDate.AddDays($DaysBack)

#delete files from $Path directory that are older than $Daysback
Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Include * -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.LastWriteTime -lt $DatetoDelete} | Remove-Item -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Recurse -Force

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '17 at 14:56

-1

Try this:

$cleanup_days = 5
$cleanup_lastWrite = $now.AddDays(-$cleanup_days)

Get-ChildItem -Path "E:\del" | Where-Object { $_ -is [System.IO.FileInfo] } | ForEach-Object {
    If ($_.LastWriteTime -lt $cleanup_lastWrite)
    {
        Remove-Item $("E:\del\" + $_)
    }
}

answered Mar 27 '17 at 14:56

GitGawd

53
9

You need to declare $now or it will throw an error. Try adding `$now = Get-Date` along with your other variables. – Will Webb Apr 20 '17 at 09:40

How can I delete files older than x days?

2 Answers2