How to: Set the Expiration Date on a Backup (SQL Server Management Studio)
This topic explains how to set the expiration date on a backup. The expiration date controls when a backup can be overwritten without explicitly skipping verification of the expiration data. For more information about backup expiration dates, see BACKUP (Transact-SQL).
To set the expiration date on a backup
After connecting to the appropriate instance of the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine, in Object Explorer, click the server name to expand the server tree.
Expand Databases, and, depending on the database, either select a user database or expand System Databases and select a system database.
Right-click the database, point to Tasks, and then click Back Up. The Back Up Database dialog box appears.
On the General page, for Backup set will expire, specify an expiration date to indicate when the backup set can be overwritten by another backup:
To have the backup set expire after a specific number of days, click After (the default option), and enter the number of days after set creation that the set will expire. This value can be from 0 to 99999 days; a value of 0 days means that the backup set will never expire.
The default value is set in the Default backup media retention (in days) option of the Server Properties dialog box (Database Settings page). To access this, right-click the server name in Object Explorer and select properties; then select the Database Settings page.
To have the backup set expire on a specific date, click On, and enter the date on which the set will expire.
For information about how to perform backups, see the following topics: