# ERROR for Loss of Primary Shards **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [October 17, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142 "2016-10-17T02:50:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![morning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@morning](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/morning)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/1 "2016-10-17T02:50:23Z")
Carelessly make several primary shards lost and now the elasticsearch state is below: ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/2X/e/ee10718f96f7543ff14d5e020d11249305ea3396.png) it takes about 2 days that hundreds of shards in initializing how to make health green version is 1.3.1 ---
**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:** [October 17, 2016, 3:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/2 "2016-10-17T03:39:05Z")
> [@morning](#): > > how to make health green Wait. Then upgrade to 1.7 at least, preferably 2.X. ---
**Author:** ![morning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@morning](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/morning)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/4 "2016-10-17T04:16:46Z")
i have waited for about 3 days , is there some solutions to make it green as soon as possible ---
**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:** [October 17, 2016, 4:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/5 "2016-10-17T04:17:01Z")
Delete the indices? ---
**Author:** ![morning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@morning](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/morning)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 4:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/6 "2016-10-17T04:20:16Z")
If i delete them, how about my data, will it all disappear? ---
**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:** [October 17, 2016, 4:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/7 "2016-10-17T04:21:44Z")
Yes. That's why you need to wait. ---
**Author:** ![morning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@morning](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/morning)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 4:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/8 "2016-10-17T04:23:18Z")
But i find it that there some shards jump from initializing to unassigned more times, what's the terminal I should wait for, ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 5:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/9 "2016-10-17T05:53:08Z")
How is your cluster set up? How many master eligible nodes do you have? What is minimum\_master\_nodes set to? What is the specification of the hosts? Elasticsearch 1.3.1 is quite old and is missing enhancements related to cluster management that came in later 1.x versions. As you are running a reasonably large cluster I agree with @warkolm that you should upgrade to at least 1.7. One important change in 2.x that could benefit you due to the size of the cluster is the ability for Elasticsearch to send cluster state diffs. This is considerably more efficient for larger clusters that replicating the entire cluster state to all nodes on every change, which is what was done prior to 2.x. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/error-for-loss-of-primary-shards/63142/10 "2017-07-05T22:11:53Z")