powershell : what is wrong with this if get-childitem statement?

Question

I'm having trouble getting this powershell statement to work. The objective is I'm trying to get a list of folders which are in ..\archive folder sorted by oldest to youngest. I would like to copy the number of folders which amount to or less than $ClosedJobssize from the ..\Archive to the ..\movetotape folder. This is so the size of the ..\Archive folder never changes on the hard drive.

get-childitem -path "\\srv02\d$\Prepress\Archive" | sort-object -property 

@{Expression={$_.CreationTime};Ascending=$false} | % { if (((get-childitem -path 

"\\srv02\d$\prepress\archive" -recurse -force | measure-object -Property Length -Sum).Sum + $_.Length) 

-lt $closedjobssize ) { move-item -destination "\\srv02\d$\prepress\archive\MoveToTape\" }}

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? I don't get any errors, it just sits and hangs when I execute it.

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Try this it's a long one-liner (remove -whatIf to perform the move):

dir "\\srv02\d$\Prepress\Archive" | sort CreationTime -desc | where { $_.psiscontainer -AND (dir $_.fullname -recurse -force | measure-object -Property Length -Sum).Sum -lt $closedjobssize} | Move-Item -dest "\\srv02\d$\prepress\archive\MoveToTape\" -whatIf

Answer 2

I'm not quite sure I understand. But I think you want to move folders in \archive to \archive\movetotape to fill up \movetotape until it is $ClosedJobsSize or less in size. Right?

Couple things. You are adding up the size of everything in \archive, so the result of your comparison will never change. Second, one of the folders checked is MoveToTape itself, which could cause you to move it into itself (this should give an exception).

Given that, I think this code will work but I haven't tested it.

## Get all the directories in \arcive that need to be moved
$Directories = Get-ChildItem "\\srv02\d$\Prepress\Archive" | 
    Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.Name -ne "MoveToTape")} | Sort-Object CreationTime -Descending
foreach ($Directory in $Directories)
{
    $SumOfMoveToTape = (Get-ChildItem "\\srv02\d$\prepress\archive\MoveToTape\" -Recurse | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum
    $SumOfItem = (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum
    if(($SumOfMoveToTape + $SumOfItem) -lt $ClosedJobsSize)
    {
     ## If we can fit on MoveToTape, then move this directory
     Move-Item -Destination "\\srv02\d$\prepress\archive\MoveToTape\"
    }
    ## If you want to keep folders in order (and not try to squeze whatever onto the tape
    ## then put an 'else {break}' here
}