# Data storage - too much space taken **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [November 9, 2016, 3:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513 "2016-11-09T15:27:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![linuxdev](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@linuxdev](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/linuxdev)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 3:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513/1 "2016-11-09T15:27:37Z")
So im testing elasticsearch and it turns out that I accumulate ~1gb of data ever 24 hours. This is way more than Ive anticipated. I initially planned to dump data on harddrive, but with 1Tb drive it will get filled up fairly soon... What do u guys do in cases like this? Where do u store so much data? ---
**Author:** ![nik9000](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nik9000/32/44947_2.png) [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 4:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513/2 "2016-11-09T16:25:47Z")
Most folks age out data after a certain amount of time, removing those indices. You can usually save space by: 1. You can turn off [doc\_values](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/doc-values.html) for fields you won't sort or aggregate on to save space and a bit on indexing time. 2. You can [turn off indexing](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/mapping-index.html) on fields you don't need to search by or you can use [`index_options`](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index-options.html) to store fewer things. 3. [\_force\_merge](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-forcemerge.html) old indices. You can also look at the [shrink](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.0/indices-shrink-index.html) API to reduce the number of shards. These aren't mutually exclusive but don't save a ton of space, usually. There are probably more things I'm forgetting. ---
**Author:** ![linuxdev](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@linuxdev](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/linuxdev)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 4:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513/3 "2016-11-09T16:52:21Z")
Yeah - I agree you can do certain optimizations and save some space. But then I think large companies also just don't store data on a single harddrive. I strongly suspect they use some alternatives like some expandable cloud storage or something like that... Im more interesting in that sort of approach. ---
**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513/4 "2016-11-09T19:21:02Z")
A current mid-size server can take about an 8 TB RAID disk subsystem, e.g. 8 x 2,5" slots with enterprise SAS disk, around 1 TB capacity per drive. Even with that single server (actually, you will consider at least three servers to establish a truly distributed system), you could comfortably run 1 GB/day disk space growth rate for 4000 days (\>10 years) without even thinking of archiving or aging out the index data to reach 4 TB disk allocation. I don't know about your resource calculations but after 10 years you will certainly feel ready to move to a next server hardware generation. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/data-storage-too-much-space-taken/65513/5 "2016-12-07T19:21:02Z")
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