# About snapshot recovery

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/about-snapshot-recovery/248813>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 16, 2020, 10:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/about-snapshot-recovery/248813 "2020-09-16T10:07:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zjh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/898d66/32.png) [@zjh](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/zjh)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2020, 10:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/about-snapshot-recovery/248813/1 "2020-09-16T10:07:32Z")

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Does ES plan to allow changes to the "number of shard" when using snapshot recovery in the future?

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**Author:** ![Emanuil](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/emanuil/32/36783_2.png) [@Emanuil](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Emanuil)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2020, 1:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/about-snapshot-recovery/248813/2 "2020-09-16T13:20:01Z")

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Welcome to the community :)!

[Parameters allowed to change during restore are described in the docs.](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/snapshots-restore-snapshot.html#_changing_index_settings_during_restore)

But

> Some settings such as index.number\_of\_shards cannot be changed during the restore operation.

So no, you can't change the number of primary shards during a restore. You can change the number of replica shards as per the link above. To change the number of primary shards, after restore you'll have to do one of:

- [reindex](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.9/docs-reindex.html) into a new index with the desired number of shards
- use the [split Index API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.9/indices-split-index.html) to increase the number of shards or the [shrink Index API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.9/indices-shrink-index.html) to reduce the number of shards

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 1:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/about-snapshot-recovery/248813/3 "2020-10-14T13:20:13Z")

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