# Unable to delete snapshot "index and alias names need to be unique"

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot-index-and-alias-names-need-to-be-unique/49676>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 10, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot-index-and-alias-names-need-to-be-unique/49676 "2016-05-10T15:16:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jdlourenco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/aca169/32.png) [@jdlourenco](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jdlourenco)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot-index-and-alias-names-need-to-be-unique/49676/1 "2016-05-10T15:16:28Z")

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I am having trouble deleting snapshots created in a previous version of elasticsearch.  
I am currently using 2.1.2 and I have created these snapshots back in 1.7.2.

When I try to delete a snapshot using:

`curl -s -XDELETE localhost:9200/_snapshot/repoX/snapY?pretty`

I get the following error message:

`{ "error" : { "root_cause" : [{ "type" : "remote_transport_exception", "reason" : "[cluster:admin/snapshot/delete]" } ], "type" : "illegal_state_exception", "reason" : "index and alias names need to be unique, but alias [indexZ] and index [indexZ] have the same name" }, "status" : 500 }`

This seems to be due to the restriction that I think was introduced in 2.0.0 that index and alias names must be unique in a cluster.

I need to delete these snapshots because I am running out of disk space.

Is this a bug? Did anyone run into this already? How can I fix it?

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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:** [July 5, 2017, 10:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-snapshot-index-and-alias-names-need-to-be-unique/49676/2 "2017-07-05T22:52:42Z")

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