# Delete Snaphost can't reduce disk usage
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 20, 2018, 10:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667 "2018-12-20T10:50:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@yan\_gong](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/yan_gong)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 10:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/1 "2018-12-20T10:50:56Z")
Hi, I am using the version of Es is 5.6.8. Recently ,I have met a question that I want to use api to delete snapshot to reduce disk usage , but when I deleted some of snapshots ,there was no change of my disk , what can I do to reduce the disk ?
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 11:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/2 "2018-12-20T11:14:32Z")
It basically means that snapshots you deleted were referring segments that are still used by other snapshots.
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### Author:  [@yan\_gong](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/yan_gong)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 4:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/3 "2018-12-21T04:32:58Z")
Hello @dadoonet
Thank you for your reply , I want to reduce my disk usage,
How can I delete the snapshots to reduce the disk ?
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### Author:  [@TimV](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TimV)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 4:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/4 "2018-12-21T04:49:17Z")
If you keep deleting more snapshots, you will eventually remove all of the snapshots that used those segments, and the segments will be removed and free up the disk space.
However, depending on your index & snapshot configuration you might need to remove very recent snapshots in order to achieve the reduction in disk space that you are after.
As an extreme example, if you have an index that is never written to, and you snapshot it every day, then each of those snapshots will refer to the same segement file.
If you delete a single snapshot, then it will recover a very small amount of disk space (cluster state, and metadata about the snapshot), but you would have to remove _every single snapshot_ before the segment file was deleted.
Without knowing anything about your data, your merge policies, or you snapshot configuration we cannot tell you how many snapshots you would need to delete before the segment files would be removed.
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### Author:  [@yan\_gong](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/yan_gong)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 6:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/5 "2018-12-21T06:27:40Z")
Hello @TimV, It's very kind of you to reply my question.
I know how to do it.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2019, 6:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-snaphost-cant-reduce-disk-usage/161667/6 "2019-01-18T06:27:41Z")
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