# Сan anyone give me some advice on force merge?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/an-anyone-give-me-some-advice-on-force-merge/381610>\
**Category:** Elastic Search\
**Created:** [September 4, 2025, 3:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/an-anyone-give-me-some-advice-on-force-merge/381610 "2025-09-04T15:10:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Nikita\_Kozachevskyi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nikita_kozachevskyi/32/143392_2.png) [@Nikita\_Kozachevskyi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Nikita_Kozachevskyi)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 3:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/an-anyone-give-me-some-advice-on-force-merge/381610/1 "2025-09-04T15:10:30Z")

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We currently have a 155 GB index. Our plan is to disable data recording in it, then run a force merge, and afterwards perform a soft delete cleanup. Could you please clarify: after running the force merge and soft deletes, will it still be possible to re-enable the index and continue writing new data to it?

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**Author:** ![piotrprz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/piotrprz/32/128141_2.png) [@piotrprz](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/piotrprz)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2025, 6:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/an-anyone-give-me-some-advice-on-force-merge/381610/2 "2025-09-08T06:29:59Z")

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Hi!  
That should work. However, force-merge might not be the best approach if you plan to keep writing to the index.  
Reason: it can leave you with huge segments that won’t be merged for a long time and can hurt search and increase disk use.

As always, I’d recommend testing stuff and in this very case: rollover + ILM.