How to remove backups created by Windows Server Backup

The other day I had a need to run a demo for a customer that involved showing backup and recovery of AD LDS using Windows Server Backup. I decided to re-use an existing virtual machine and wanted to start afresh by clearing all existing backups. Simple enough, I thought, and proceeded to re-format the dedicated backup disk (using diskmgmt.msc).

When the format was finished I went into the Windows Server Backup UI (wbadmin.msc) and expected to see the jobs cleared. Instead they appeared as they did before I re-formatted the backup disk.

I figured from this that the backup catalog information must be stored elsewhere. I couldn’t find an option to clear the catalog information from within the UI, so I had a look at the command line (wbadmin.exe) help. No luck there either. Eventually, I found an additional Wbadmin delete catalog command in Windows Help and Support. This had the desired effect of removing the list of backups from the UI (see below).

The only problem now was that the Windows Server Backup UI still displayed messages relating to the previous backup (see screenshot above). The source of these messages is the Backup event log, as shown in the screenshot below. If you clear the event log the messages are removed from the Windows Server Backup UI.