How to create rolling backups for SQL Server 2008 R2 I want to run daily backups for a set of databases to disk such that I always have 3 days’ worth of backups kept for each database, with the oldest backup being deleted or overwritten each day. I set up a maintenance plan and set the expiry for the backup set to 3 days. The system uses a timestamp for each file (which I like) but older files are not removed and just build up in the directory, so I'm not sure what expiry means. Is there a way to achieve what I am looking for without having to write re a separate script to clean up the old backups?
Ola Hallengren's excellent scripts provide solutions for database maintenance including backups - the scripts have won some awards in the last year, and are increasingly referenced by SQL Server luminaries. I've been using them for about a year - I love them because they are highly configurable - for backups, you define the retention period in the job in hours. The retention period only kicks in if you actually have refresh backups.

http://ola.hallengren.com/