BORG-DELETE(1)

NAME
borg-delete - Delete archives

SYNOPSIS

borg [common options] delete [options]

DESCRIPTION

This command deletes archives from the repository.

Important: When deleting archives, repository disk space is not freed until you run borg compact.

When in doubt, use --dry-run --list to see what would be deleted.

When using --stats, you will get some statistics about how much data was deleted - the "Deleted data" deduplicated size there is most interesting as that is how much your repository will shrink. Please note that the "All archives" stats refer to the state after deletion.

You can delete multiple archives by specifying a matching shell pattern, using the --glob-archives GLOB option (for more info on these patterns, see borg_patterns).

Always first use --dry-run --list to see what would be deleted.

OPTIONS

See borg-common(1) for common options of Borg commands.

  optional arguments

-n, --dry-run
    do not change repository

--list
    output verbose list of archives

--consider-checkpoints
    consider checkpoint archives for deletion (default: not considered).

-s, --stats
    print statistics for the deleted archive

--cache-only
    delete only the local cache for the given repository

--force
    force deletion of corrupted archives, use --force --force in case --force does not work.

--save-space
    work slower, but using less space

-c SECONDS, --checkpoint-interval SECONDS
    write checkpoint every SECONDS seconds (Default: 1800)

  Archive filters

-a GLOB, --glob-archives GLOB
    only consider archive names matching the glob. sh: rules apply, see "borg help patterns".

--sort-by KEYS
    Comma-separated list of sorting keys; valid keys are: timestamp, name, id; default is: timestamp

--first N
    consider first N archives after other filters were applied

--last N
    consider last N archives after other filters were applied

EXAMPLES

# delete a single backup archive:
$ borg delete Monday
# actually free disk space:
$ borg compact
# delete all archives whose names begin with the machine's hostname followed by "-"
$ borg delete -a '{hostname}-*'
# delete all archives whose names contain "-2012-"
$ borg delete -a '*-2012-*'
# see what would be deleted if delete was run without --dry-run
$ borg delete --list --dry-run -a '*-May-*'

SEE ALSO

borg-common(1), borg-compact(1)

AUTHOR
The Borg Collective