# Deleting individual indexes from a datastream

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** datastreams\
**Created:** [December 31, 2020, 1:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924 "2020-12-31T01:35:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Russell\_Fulton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/russell_fulton/32/62888_2.png) [@Russell\_Fulton](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Russell_Fulton)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 1:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924/1 "2020-12-31T01:35:16Z")

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I have a datastream which I set up recently and as a check I set to rollover every day so I could see that it was woking as expected. That was just before Christmas and I saw it roll over once...

I came back today and found that as soon as I turned my back there was an issue with the data source and I now have 5 empty indexes taking up valuable shards. When I try and delete these kibana warns me that "deleting system indexes may break things". Clearly this is true for real system indices but is it still true for datastream indices\>

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 4:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924/2 "2020-12-31T04:17:09Z")

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Can you post a screenshot of that?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Russell\_Fulton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/russell_fulton/32/62888_2.png) [@Russell\_Fulton](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Russell_Fulton)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 10:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924/3 "2021-01-08T22:04:39Z")

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sorry to take so long -- I have been trying not to work during my "holiday"!

 ![Screen Shot 2021-01-09 at 11.02.18 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/4/4/4446623281237daa667cf4a3ce7676756195fde0.png)

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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:** [February 5, 2021, 10:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-individual-indexes-from-a-datastream/259924/4 "2021-02-05T22:05:06Z")

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