# Deleting \_recovery\_source
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-recovery-source/327028
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 6, 2023, 5:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-recovery-source/327028 "2023-03-06T05:32:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kpachar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kpachar)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2023, 5:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-recovery-source/327028/1 "2023-03-06T05:32:45Z")
Hi everyone,
I'm on Elasticsearch 8.6.2.
I wanted to reduce disk usage of my indices, and noticed that the `_recovery_source` takes up quite some space.
I tried setting `index.soft_deletes.enabled` to `false`, but index creation wasn't allowed by elasticsearch with that.
I then tried setting `index.soft_deletes.retention_lease.period` to `"10s"` and called the forcemerge API after writing some documents. This didn't delete the \_recovery\_source. I restarted elasticsearch and retried forcemerge, but it made no difference.
I keep retrying the forcemerge API and after some random number of attempts, it does eventually delete the \_recovery\_source.
But is there a way to reliably make elasticsearch delete \_recovery\_source?
Thank you
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2023, 5:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/deleting-recovery-source/327028/2 "2023-04-03T05:33:27Z")
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