Dear All,

Thank you very much for your replies. Much appreciated. Yes, it is SQL Litespeed I am using as the 3rd party compression tool. I didn't realise that the SS2005 Maintenance Cleanup Task only removes native SQL Server backups. I just assumed that it would delete files in the location and with the extension specified, but I guess the radio option 'Delete files of the following type' should have been a clue.

They are full backup files of a Data Warehouse which we take both pre and post nightly data load from the various operational systems that feed into it. The disk on the server the files backup to isn't particularly big and can only hold the most recent pre and post data load backups at any one time. Note that these backups are further backed up to an offsite location, hence it's OK to delete them like this. In any event, the operational load could just be re-run if for some reason no up to date backups are available.

Interesting. Annoying, but interesting. I will see what Litespeed offers to do this. I hope that can deal with hours as the backups I will be wanting to delete each time are less than 24 hours old.

Thanks once again,

Chris