# Why will writing to force merged indices make performance "much worse"?!
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-will-writing-to-force-merged-indices-make-performance-much-worse/342152
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [September 1, 2023, 9:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-will-writing-to-force-merged-indices-make-performance-much-worse/342152 "2023-09-01T21:18:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@neo-anderson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/neo-anderson)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2023, 9:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-will-writing-to-force-merged-indices-make-performance-much-worse/342152/1 "2023-09-01T21:18:49Z")
I have been following the changes to the documentation regarding force merge warning. I understand that force merging to an index that's actively being written to is a bad idea. However, if I use force merge to bring down the number of segments to `n`, wait for it to complete and then write to the index, why would it make the performance "much worse" according to the warning? I just have to make sure that max segments to merge to isn't too few so that \>5GB segments are created, right?
Thank you
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2023, 9:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-will-writing-to-force-merged-indices-make-performance-much-worse/342152/2 "2023-09-29T21:19:17Z")
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