Which Volumes Can I Recycle? — Reclaiming Storage Without Risk

Your pool is getting tight. You know some volumes are past retention. You know recycling is the answer. But which volumes? And is it safe?

In bconsole, you’d run list volumes pool=YourPool and look for volumes with status “Purged” or past their retention date. Then you’d manually check what’s on each one. Then you’d decide. For 500 volumes, that’s an afternoon.

The recycling puzzle

Volume recycling sounds simple — mark old volumes for reuse. In practice, it’s a puzzle:

• Is anything still referencing this volume?
• Are there Incremental chains that depend on data here?
• Does the client still need this recovery point?
• Will recycling this volume break a compliance window?

Answering these questions requires cross-referencing jobs, volumes, retention policies, and client requirements. No single bconsole command gives you this picture.

Smart recycling recommendations

What you actually need:

• A list of safely recyclable volumes — already past retention, no dependencies
• Estimated storage recovered per volume
• Warning flags for volumes that are technically expired but still needed
• One-click recycling with confirmation

Where this fits in Onesimus

Onesimus Pro will add smart recycling recommendations — identifying volumes that are safe to recycle, estimating recovered storage, and flagging potential issues before you act. Combined with storage visibility and consumption analysis, Pro gives you the complete storage intelligence picture.

This is question 5 of 5. The complete picture:

Community gives you a modern management interface today. Pro and Enterprise will answer the 5 questions — visually. All driven by the same insight: backup admins don’t need more commands — they need more visibility.

See the roadmap →