# Effect on having one or more path.data?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/effect-on-having-one-or-more-path-data/181226>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 15, 2019, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/effect-on-having-one-or-more-path-data/181226 "2019-05-15T14:58:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sferry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@sferry](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sferry)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/effect-on-having-one-or-more-path-data/181226/1 "2019-05-15T14:58:40Z")

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HEllo there,  
I am studying the ELK stack, and i cannot find the answer:  
what is the use of multiple path ?  
It looks like indices are copied to the x number of paths, so no space gain. Is that correct?  
Does it give more efficiency in indexing/searching?  
Is it related to shards ?  
Thanks  
Regards  
Sophie

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**Author:** ![whatgeorgemade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/whatgeorgemade/32/103246_2.png) [@whatgeorgemade](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/whatgeorgemade)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/effect-on-having-one-or-more-path-data/181226/2 "2019-05-15T15:23:11Z")

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Hi there,

Using more than one value in `path.data` will cause the data to be spread ( **not** copied) over those paths. Files for a particular shard will be stored in the same directory.

As far as I'm aware, as all data for any shard is still in one place and there are no other optimisations made, there's no indexing/searching benefit to using multiple paths.

There's some information [here](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/master/path-settings.html)

Hope this helps.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/effect-on-having-one-or-more-path-data/181226/3 "2019-06-12T15:23:23Z")

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