Question

I want to do a backup of my Projects folder. It mostly contains sub-folders for .NET projects (VS2005, VS08, and VS10).

What should I delete before doing a backup (e.g. TestResults, bin, obj); if there is something I shouldn’t delete but should ignore, what might that be; and, most importantly, how best to automate the whole process (I’m thinking batch file or better)?

What gotchas do I need to be aware of?

Answer 1

(EDIT: Looks like others, including Jeff Atwood, have created tools to do this.)

Ok, figured out that it’s hard to recursively search subfolders and delete those folders matching a pattern using a batch file and cmd. Luckily, PowerShell (which is installed on Windows 7 by default, IIRC) can do it (kudos):

get-childitem C:\Projects\* -include TestResults -recurse | remove-item -recurse -force

That was based off of example 4 of the Remove-Item help entry. It searches the path, recursively, for anything (file or folder) named “TestResults” (could put a wildcard in there if wanted) and pipes the results to the Remove-Item command, which deletes them. To test it out, just remove the pipe to Remove-Item.

How do we remove more than just one folder per statement? Input the list of folders in PowerShell’s array syntax:

get-childitem C:\Projects\* -include bin,obj,TestResults -recurse | remove-item -recurse -force

You can run this from the command prompt or similar like so (reference)

powershell.exe -noexit get-childitem C:\Projects\* -include bin,obj,TestResults -recurse | remove-item -recurse

Obvious Disclaimer

Don’t use this method if you keep necessary files inside folders or files named bin, obj, etc.