Question

I have put together a script to delete backed up files, but believe I am have the archive bit attribute confused.

$path = "D:\logs\"
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse
$attribute = [io.fileattributes]::archive   #archive bit
$date = get-date -format d     # strip time out of date, date needed for Filename
$date = $date.replace('/','.') # strip out forward slashes and replac with . in date
$filename = "\ArchiveLog"+$date+".txt" # Filename for log file.
$location = $path+$filename 
cd D:\logs 

Foreach($file in $files)
{
 If((Get-ItemProperty -Path $file.fullname).attributes -band $attribute)
  { 
    add-content -path "$path" "$file.DirectoryName has been deleted"
    Remove-Item $file -force
  }
}

however when I test this, this script deletes brand new files that have just been created, as the files that are newly created have the “A” attribute or archive bit.

When I have looked at other sample scripts they usually have the line, that ensures the files archive bit is set:

attribute = [io.fileattributes]::archive   #archive bit
If((Get-ItemProperty -Path $file.fullname).attributes -band $attribute)
{ 
log file name    
Remove file
}

So … I was wondering if this is something new to windows 2008 r2 where the archive bit “A” is set automatically upon creation, or if perhaps the other scripts I have found are wrong.

Answer 1

I think you are making this more complicated than it needs to be. Here’s an example where I return only TXT files with the ARCHIVE attribute set:

PS C:> dir c:\work*.txt | where {$_.attributes -match “Archive”} | select name
,attributes

You can add additional filtering as needed if you only want files newer or older than a certain date.