# How to quickly release the capacity of scylladb？

**URL:** <https://forum.scylladb.com/t/how-to-quickly-release-the-capacity-of-scylladb/1158>\
**Category:** ScyllaDB\
**Tags:** compaction\
**Created:** [January 5, 2024, 2:42am UTC](https://forum.scylladb.com/t/how-to-quickly-release-the-capacity-of-scylladb/1158 "2024-01-05T02:42:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bo\_li](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.scylladb.com/bo_li/32/438_2.png) [@bo\_li](https://forum.scylladb.com/u/bo_li)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2024, 2:42am UTC](https://forum.scylladb.com/t/how-to-quickly-release-the-capacity-of-scylladb/1158/1 "2024-01-05T02:42:16Z")

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I created a table through the Alterator interface and filled it with a large amount of data. Now I need to clean up the database space, so I deleted this table through AWS.

```auto
aws dynamodb delete-table --table-name ycsb

```

Through `nodetool status`, it can be seen that the cluster’s capacity has decreased, but the actual disk usage space has not decreased. I found that its data directory is still there. I am also unable to perform compact on this table because it no longer exists.  
So how to quickly release cluster space? Do we have to wait for the tombstone time to expire and automatically clean it up? This has been too long.  
Thanks!

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**Author:** ![bhalevy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.scylladb.com/bhalevy/32/175_2.png) [@bhalevy](https://forum.scylladb.com/u/bhalevy)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2024, 8:20am UTC](https://forum.scylladb.com/t/how-to-quickly-release-the-capacity-of-scylladb/1158/2 "2024-01-07T08:20:54Z")

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By default, scylla takes a snapshot of a table right before it’s deleted, in case the data needs to be recovered.  
To reclaim the storage space, the snapshot needs to be removed.