# How To Disable Recovery Process / Delete Old Shards
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-disable-recovery-process-delete-old-shards/18062
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 12, 2014, 9:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-disable-recovery-process-delete-old-shards/18062 "2014-06-12T09:02:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@seja12](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/seja12)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2014, 9:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-disable-recovery-process-delete-old-shards/18062/1 "2014-06-12T09:02:08Z")
During a botched upgrade process my data was deleted. As it was a test server it didn't matter. However, upon reinstall it just constantly tries to recover old shards, even after deleting every know file on the server that contains elasticsearch data. Can someone let me know of how to disable the recovery process and where elasticsearch hides the file it reads to see what files to recover?
Below is an example from the log file (repeated constantly):
] [Quicksand] [blurays][1] recovery from [[Stilt-Man][mxmoAlTaTkClmfpImcpb1A][254020-ipaddress]] failed
org.elasticsearch.transport.RemoteTransportException: [Stilt-Man][inet[/ipaddress]][index/shard/recovery/startRecovery]
Caused by: org.elasticsearch.index.engine.RecoveryEngineException: [blurays][1] Phase[1] Execution failed
at org.elasticsearch.index.engine.internal.InternalEngine.recover(InternalEngine.java:996)
at org.elasticsearch.index.shard.service.InternalIndexShard.recover(InternalIndexShard.java:631)
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource.recover(RecoverySource.java:122)
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource.access$1600(RecoverySource.java:62)
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource$StartRecoveryTransportRequestHandler.messageReceived(RecoverySource.java:351)
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource$StartRecoveryTransportRequestHandler.messageReceived(RecoverySource.java:337)
at org.elasticsearch.transport.netty.MessageChannelHandler$RequestHandler.run(MessageChannelHandler.java:270)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:724)
Caused by: org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverFilesRecoveryException: [blurays][1] Failed to transfer [1] files with total size of [71b]
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource$1.phase1(RecoverySource.java:243)
at org.elasticsearch.index.engine.internal.InternalEngine.recover(InternalEngine.java:993)
... 9 more
Caused by: java.nio.file.NoSuchFileException: /home/programs/elasticsearch-1.2.1/data/elasticsearch/nodes/1/indices/blurays/1/index/segments\_1
at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.translateToIOException(UnixException.java:86)
at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.rethrowAsIOException(UnixException.java:102)
at sun.nio.fs.UnixException.rethrowAsIOException(UnixException.java:107)
at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystemProvider.newFileChannel(UnixFileSystemProvider.java:176)
at java.nio.channels.FileChannel.open(FileChannel.java:287)
at java.nio.channels.FileChannel.open(FileChannel.java:334)
at org.apache.lucene.store.MMapDirectory.openInput(MMapDirectory.java:193)
at org.apache.lucene.store.FilterDirectory.openInput(FilterDirectory.java:80)
at org.elasticsearch.index.store.Store.openInputRaw(Store.java:319)
at org.elasticsearch.indices.recovery.RecoverySource$1$1.run(RecoverySource.java:189)
... 3 more
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-disable-recovery-process-delete-old-shards/18062/2 "2017-07-06T01:23:04Z")