Please, I need a BATCH to delete all folders, except specific folders and sub-folders

[Decopi]

Hi,
I have a SSD with several partitions.
I need to work at J:\ and I need to delete everything inside J:\, except the following folders:

J:\System Volume Information
J:\$RECYCLE.BIN
J:\New
J:\Old Stuff

And the following sub-folders:

J:\Papers\Folder
J:\Room\Main Documents
J:\Year\Origin\Part
J:\Year\Origin\Part Two

After searching and reading a lot, I wrote the following code:

@echo OFF
SETLOCAL
SET "sourcedir=J:\"
SET "keepdir=System Volume Information"
SET "keepdir=$RECYCLE.BIN"
SET "keepdir=New"
SET "keepdir=Old Stuff"
SET "keepdir=Papers\Folder"
SET "keepdir=Room\Main Documents"
SET "keepdir=Year\Origin\Part"
SET "keepdir=Year\Origin\Part Two"
FOR /d %%a IN ("%sourcedir%\*") DO IF /i NOT "%%~nxa"=="%keepdir%" RD /S /Q "%%a"
GOTO :EOF

Unfortunately, the code above doesn't work (it deletes everything inside J:\).
Please, I will appreciate any help.
Thank you in advance!

 

[Neemobeer]

Well for starters you assign multiple values to the same variable so it's only going to contain the last value.
I also would not use a batch file, it was ok back in the day but you have way more usable language like powershell now.

 

[Neemobeer]

It's best to breakdown a problem into small steps. The process would be something like this

• Create a full path exclusion list
• Get all directory paths in your root directory
• If path is a partial or full match from your exclusion list, remove it from the list "to be deleted" (partial matches would be a parent directory)
• Delete what remains