I both like and don't like the concept of the backup file containing the date of backup, right now I don't code the date into the file name on our systems, and I don't use maintenance plans for backups. It's nice in that you can look at the file and see the database name and backup date, but the file has a timestamp that also shows the date, so the information almost seems redundant since the file timestamp is not altered when the file is restored. Plus, the thought of digging in to the system tables (though I love working with system tables!) to find file names to delete just really bugs me for some reason. I prefer to have my system just overwrite the backup and not worry about it. On occasion a backup will fail and something will have squirreled-up the backup file, in which case I delete it and do a backup with overwrite and that seems to take care of it.