Remove files from recycle bin for all users after 30 days

Question

Hello All,

I’m trying to prepare powershell script which removes files from recycle bin. This script should check if files were removed 30 days ago or are in recycle bin longer and then remove them.

I found such script but I think that it is not correct as there are $_.LastWriteTime not somethink like DalateADate.

ForEach ($Drive in Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem) {
$Path = $Drive.Name + ‘:$RECYCLE.BIN’
Get-ChildItem $Path -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-7) } |
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force
}

I’m completly new with powershell scripting and I spent a lot of hours to find out solutions but with no luck.

May I kindly ask you to give me some adive?

OS:Windows Server 2016

Regards,
Sebastian

Answer 1

You are missing a backslash in the path.

A common problem that I see on these forums is that folks who are new to PS string together multiple cmdlets in one long pipeline and don't understand what it's doing when they don't get the results that they expect. While pipelines are great, if you are starting out, be verbose so that you can understand more about the object that you are dealing with. Like this.

ForEach ($Drive in Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem) {
    $Path = $Drive.Name + ‘:\$RECYCLE.BIN’
    "Testing {0}" -f $path
    $files = Get-ChildItem $Path -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue 
    foreach ($f in $files) {
        "{0} - {1}" -f $f.name, $f.lastwritetime
        if ( $f.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-7)) {
            "   Delete the above file."
            $f | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -whatif 
        }
    }
}