# Complete newbie, but need urgent cleanup
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802
**Category:** Kibana
**Created:** [August 30, 2021, 11:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802 "2021-08-30T11:12:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TwanVeugelers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TwanVeugelers)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2021, 11:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/1 "2021-08-30T11:12:31Z")
Hi.
I have taken over the monitoring / elastic search from a colleague that left the company.
I now see that our D drive is almost reaching its limits and will be full pretty shortly.
I'm a full newbie and need to learn a lot, but this is kind of important.
Can somebody direct me to the correct way to cleanup this location.
Please make the instruction completely for this ElasticSearch N00b, that I am.
The only thing I currently know is that this location is taking 707GB of data: (using TreeSize)
D:\ProgramData\Elastic\Elasticsearch\data\nodes\0\indices\
Can I somehow clean up this location?
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### Author:  [@rashmi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rashmi)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2021, 5:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/2 "2021-08-30T17:34:49Z")
> [@TwanVeugelers](#):
>
> \data\nodes\0\indices\
There isn't much if the data on your cluster is huge. Can you take a back up of your data [Back up a cluster’s data | Elasticsearch Guide [8.11] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/backup-cluster-data.html) and delete the data folder and restore it ?
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### Author:  [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2021, 5:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/3 "2021-08-30T17:45:11Z")
Hi @TwanVeugelers Welcome to the community, sorry you are joining with an urgent issue.
Another very quick approach would be to Log Into Kibana.
First take a snapshot as @rashmi indicated
**DO NOT Delete Manually delete files from the**
`\data\nodes\0\indices\`
**Directory or you WILL Corrupt your cluster.**
Then in the Kibana -\> Dev Tools run the following
`GET /_cat/indices/*?v&s=pri.store.size:desc`
This ill list the indices by name
`GET /_cat/indices/*/?v&s=index:desc`
This will list the indices by size in descending order.
You can DELETE any indices by using the following command
**NOTE IF YOU HAVE NOT BACKED UP THE INDICES THEY WILL BE PERMANENTLY LOST**
`DELETE my-index-name`
This will clean up space in the proper manner
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### Author:  [@TwanVeugelers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TwanVeugelers)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2021, 6:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/4 "2021-08-31T06:28:19Z")
Hi @stephenb @rashmi
Thank you for your replies.
I have this list of indexes. Please let me know if I read this correct.
Lets talk about the big ones, metric beat 2021.04.13, is this file only historical data for that particular date?
I only need data that is at most 7 days old. So is my assumption correct that I could easily:
DELETE metricbeat-7.10.2-2021.04.13-000003
on the DEV Tools? And basically only lose old historical data that nobody will ever look into again!
Sorry, as said, complete newbie.
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### Author:  [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2021, 1:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/5 "2021-08-31T13:40:31Z")
Hi @TwanVeugelers
Good you got this far.
**2nd PLEASE do not post screen shots,** they are very hard to read, can not be search nor cut-n-past etc. Please paste in the text next time and format with the `` button
The index That is the start date of that data ..... so it is more than 1 day
I see these 2 so the 04.13 index has nearly 1 month of data
metricbeat-7.10.2-2021.04.13-00003
metricbeat-7.10.2-2021.05.13-00004
You can actually run this and get the actual min and max dates times.
```auto
GET metricbeat-7.10.2-2021.04.13-00003/_search
{
"size": 0,
"aggs": {
"min_date": {
"min": {
"field": "@timestamp",
"format": "yyyy-MM-dd HH.mm.ss"
}
},
"max_date": {
"max": {
"field": "@timestamp",
"format": "yyyy-MM-dd HH.mm.ss"
}
}
}
}
```
And Yes if you DELETE it will permanently delete that data and clean up disk space.
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### Author:  [@TwanVeugelers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TwanVeugelers)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2021, 6:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/6 "2021-09-01T06:23:25Z")
Hi @stephenb
Thank you very much.
I have now removed some old data. So for now the pressure is of the kettle (Dutch saying 😉)
One quick question, using excel and notepad++ I was able to quickly select some 100+ files I want to delete. How would I go about to remove them in 1 go?
Where can I learn more about the language used in DevTools?
many regards,
Twan Veugelers
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### Author:  [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2021, 1:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/7 "2021-09-01T13:42:02Z")
Assuming you mean indices not files in the directory.
Use notepad to format all the individual DELETE request then you can cut and paste them in into the Kibana Dev Tool and select and highlight them all and press the \> arrow and it will execute all the commands serially.
I would do like 10 at a time.
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### Author:  [@TwanVeugelers](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TwanVeugelers)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 5:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/8 "2021-09-02T05:45:41Z")
Hi @stephenb.
Yes Indices. That works like a charm, thank you very much for your effort.
regards,
Twan
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2021, 5:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/complete-newbie-but-need-urgent-cleanup/282802/9 "2021-09-30T05:45:52Z")
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