MSDE maintenance plan cannot delete older backup files

[jcaulder]

I am trying to create a maintenance plan for a MSDE instance using Enterprise Manager. When specifying how long to keep older backup files, the interface appears to allow me to enter a value(i.e. 1) but apparently ignores this value during backups.

Is there some trick to get MSDE to delete older backup files as part of the maintenance plan or has MS prevented this for MSDE?

I did notice that on versions of SQL 2000 the agent job has the following at the end of the job call:

-DelBkUps 1DAYS -BkExt "BAK"'

whereas MSDE looks like:

-DelBkUps 1 -BkExt "BAK"'

Notice the lack of any time period(DAYS, HOURS, etc) in the job call or MSDE.

I tried manually altering the job after it was created to include 1DAYS and the job fails. Also I get an error that "@freq_type is invalid" when trying to go back into the maintenance job to edit it.

One final note, the drop down within the maintenance job GUI that allows me to pick the interval is empty so I cannot specify days, hours, etc. within the GUI at all.


TIA!

J

 

[mkal]

This might pertain to you:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278667

 

[jcaulder]

Yep, I think you are exactly right! Thanks for forwarding that. I created manual backup jobs that overwrite the previous days with the same name to get around it. If it's still an issue I can write a batch to move out the previous days file to a backup directory before the next job kicks off.

Thanks again for confirming this as a bug.

J