I need to find a way to delete everything after the third .bak file in a SQL Server backup folder

Question

Working on an old SQL Server cluster that has a limited amount of space available. The cluster uses a SAS (server 2003 database) for data backups: fc_mdt , fc_mdt_trend , fc_adt . Inside those folders are multiple .bak and .trn files.

I'm looking for a way to automate deletion of everything after the third .bak file when the folder contents are listed by date modified

Answer 1

If you are ok with using powershell, then this script will help you

Get-ChildItem "C:\YourDirectory" | where{$_.Extension -eq ".bak"} |
sort -Property LastWriteTime -Descending| Select -Skip 3 | Remove-Item -Include .bak

Answer 2

If you're performing automated backups using a maintenance plan why not configure it to remove files older than a specific age, for example: