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Question and Answer

Chris Saxon

Thanks for the question, John.

Asked: July 20, 2016 - 2:32 am UTC

Last updated: July 20, 2016 - 8:51 am UTC

Version: not sure

Viewed 1000+ times

You Asked

I'm currently running a oracle db for one of our printing machines and this db stores a ton of archivelog files.
It looks like it generates around 15 a day, each between 37-50MB.
I currently have under 1000 files totaling ~34GBs, and ranging from current date to the end of March.
So my question, can i remove/delete them?
If not, how do i manage this? I cant keep on adding drive space.

Thank you in advance

and Chris said...

No, you can't delete them! At least, not directly from the disk.

You need the archivelogs to recover your database. The backup process will remove them from disk. Exactly when depends upon how you've configured your backups.

But I'm guessing that if you have archivelogs going back several months, you don't have any backups either!

Learn how to use RMAN and start taking backups today:

http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/BRADV/rcmquick.htm#BRADV89346
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/BRADV/rcmbckba.htm#BRADV8003

Make this your priority!

If you don't need point in time recovery, you could change your database to NOARCHIVELOG mode. In this case you won't have archivelogs. But you'll need to shut down your database to get a consistent backup. And you run the risk of losing data. Be sure really sure you want to do this!

http://asktom.oracle.com/Misc/archive-log-mode.html
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ADMIN/archredo.htm#ADMIN11330

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