Deleting an Archive in Amazon S3 Glacier - Amazon S3 Glacier

This page is only for existing customers of the S3 Glacier service using Vaults and the original REST API from 2012.

If you're looking for archival storage solutions we suggest using the S3 Glacier storage classes in Amazon S3, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. To learn more about these storage options, see S3 Glacier storage classes and Long-term data storage using S3 Glacier storage classes in the Amazon S3 User Guide. These storage classes use the Amazon S3 API, are available in all regions, and can be managed within the Amazon S3 console. They offer features like Storage Cost Analysis, Storage Lens, advanced optional encryption features, and more.

Deleting an Archive in Amazon S3 Glacier

You cannot delete an archive using the Amazon S3 Glacier (S3 Glacier) management console. To delete an archive you must use the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or write code to make a delete request using either the REST API directly or the AWS SDK for Java and .NET wrapper libraries. The following topics explain how to use the AWS SDK for Java and .NET wrapper libraries, the REST API, and the AWS CLI.

Topics

You can delete one archive at a time from a vault. To delete the archive you must provide its archive ID in your delete request. You can get the archive ID by downloading the vault inventory for the vault that contains the archive. For more information about downloading the vault inventory, see Downloading a Vault Inventory in Amazon S3 Glacier.

After you delete an archive, you might still be able to make a successful request to initiate a job to retrieve the deleted archive, but the archive retrieval job will fail.

Archive retrievals that are in progress for an archive ID when you delete the archive might or might not succeed according to the following scenarios:

  • If the archive retrieval job is actively preparing the data for download when S3 Glacier receives the delete archive request, then the archival retrieval operation might fail.

  • If the archive retrieval job has successfully prepared the archive for download when S3 Glacier receives the delete archive request, then you will be able to download the output.

For more information about archive retrieval, see Downloading an Archive in S3 Glacier.

This operation is idempotent. Deleting an already-deleted archive does not result in an error.

After you delete an archive, if you immediately download the vault inventory, it might include the deleted archive in the list because S3 Glacier prepares vault inventory only about once a day.