# When does a deleted index get removed from disk?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/when-does-a-deleted-index-get-removed-from-disk/19785>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 15, 2014, 12:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/when-does-a-deleted-index-get-removed-from-disk/19785 "2014-09-15T12:19:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![andrassy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andrassy/32/32783_2.png) [@andrassy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/andrassy)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 12:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/when-does-a-deleted-index-get-removed-from-disk/19785/1 "2014-09-15T12:19:28Z")

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Hi,

We recently created a lot of (date suffixed) indexes (about 3,000) on our  
development cluster (1.3.2). Subsequently we deleted many of these indexes.  
The cluster ran, predominantly green, for several days, certainly more than  
a week after that with no sign of the indexes. After that we performed a  
cluster restart and the "recover dangling indexes" functionality  
unexpectedly re-animated all of the deleted indexes. We (think) we  
understand the dangling index recovery functionality (and could potentially  
disable it - but not sure if we really want to go down that road though).

So, the question is, at what point does an index deleted through the API  
get cleaned from individual node disks? At what stage will a deleted index  
no longer be recovered as dangling? Is this zombie functionality by design?  
Has a physical part of the delete failed in our cluster? Do we need silver  
bullets to kill our indexes once and for all?

The extra problem we faced in this scenario is that the recovered indexes  
placed our elected master under quite a bit of stress, rendering our  
cluster unusable ☹

Thanks in advance for any insight,

Neil

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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 6, 2017, 1:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/when-does-a-deleted-index-get-removed-from-disk/19785/2 "2017-07-06T01:02:21Z")

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