Tape backups have failed me too many times, so I now do my Windows backup to an external hard drive. One of the office staff is in charge of swapping out our backup drives and taking it offsite. I needed a solution that would remove old backups without user intervention so they wouldn’t have to worry about having enough space available for the backup to complete.

My hard drives can hold four backups, so here’s a very simple .vbs script that deletes files from I:\Backup Files that are more than three days old:

Table of Contents
    Dim Fso
    
    Dim Directory
    
    Dim Modified
    
    Dim Files
    
    Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    
    Set Directory = Fso.GetFolder("I:\Backup Files")
    
    Set Files = Directory.Files
    
    For Each Modified in Files
    
    If DateDiff("D", Modified.DateLastModified, Now) > 3 Then Modified.Delete
    
    Next

    Save this as filename.vbs. To execute this file, run:

    cscript.exe filename.vbs

    Thanks to Don for the original script I modified for my particular needs.

    [updated 01-02-2008]

    This script from the Scripting Guy deletes files ‘X’ number of hours old. Looks like it could be modified easily to meet your needs.

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