Best way identify old files from windows servers.

Posted by jbala28@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 18 comments

Hi Team,

Hope all is well. I have bunch of windows file servers with 300gb+ data.

I’m looking for ways or free programs that can help me identify older files that like say not been modified or read for last 5 years or 10 years and I need to be able move those files to an archives storage while maintaining folder structure in case someone ask us to restore something,

I’m sure I can try generating powershell script for this. Is this better way to look this task? Has anyone done something similar.

Regards

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Commercial_Growth343@reddit

Treesize pro is a great tool for this. I am not sure if the free version will help you though. But if you have a lot of local storage, and maybe are looking at doing cleanups or a re-org then that tool can be quite helpful.

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_l33ter_@reddit

you;ve right - that's a basic powershell-script

# path
$Path = "C:\Users\NAME\Documents"

# threshold in Jahren
$Years = 10
$CutOff = (Get-Date).AddYears(-$Years)

# Find files that haven't been modified for $Years
Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Recurse -File |
    Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -lt $CutOff -and $_.LastAccessTime -lt $CutOff } |
    Select-Object FullName, LastWriteTime, LastAccessTime |
    Export-Csv -Path "C:\old_files.csv" -NoTypeInformation

something like that

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Mayki8513@reddit

$Path = "HOME\Documents" 🤔

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_l33ter_@reddit

what you've trying to say?

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Mayki8513@reddit

instead of typing out a fake path, you can type a legitimate one and it saves you time typing and OP time not having to edit it

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_l33ter_@reddit

How do I know where OP is looking?

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Mayki8513@reddit

OP should be reading it for sure, and regardless of what your username may or may not be, you can't assume it's OPs 😅

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_l33ter_@reddit

you can't assume it's OPs --> lol, never said that I assumed OPs username xd

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BlotchyBaboon@reddit

300GB? Bah, just move it all to the cloud as it is. Tell your users to clean up their old stuff and then don't worry about it when they ignore you.

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sderby@reddit

Sorry luser, legal requires we purge anything outside the retention policy.

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turbokid@reddit

Sounds like the job took care of itself? Let the cloud retention policy prune it down.

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jbala28@reddit (OP)

I have bunch of these servers. Cost would high to manage these

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AMoreExcitingName@reddit

Modified in the last 5 years...

robocopy /r:1 /w:1 /ndl /copy:DAT /e /L /minage:1899 D:\files C:\temp > oldfiles.txt

this is from memory, but will copy all files which are a minimum of 1899 days old, about 5 1/3 years. oddly enough that's the limit of robocopy. the /L switch means list results only, don't actually copy any data.

It pipes the output to a text file you can examine.

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jbala28@reddit (OP)

I will try this thanks

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