borg delete

borg [common options] delete [options] [REPOSITORY_OR_ARCHIVE] [ARCHIVE...]

positional arguments
	REPOSITORY_OR_ARCHIVE	repository or archive to delete
	ARCHIVE	archives to delete
optional arguments
	-n, --dry-run	do not change repository
	--list	output verbose list of archives
	-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.
	--keep-security-info	keep the local security info when deleting a repository
	--save-space	work slower, but using less space
Common options
Archive filters — Archive filters can be applied to repository targets.
	-P PREFIX, --prefix PREFIX	only consider archive names starting with this prefix.
	-a GLOB, --glob-archives GLOB	only consider archive names matching the glob. sh: rules apply, see “borg help patterns”. --prefix and --glob-archives are mutually exclusive.
	--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

Description

This command deletes an archive from the repository or the complete repository.

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

When you delete a complete repository, the security info and local cache for it (if any) are also deleted. Alternatively, you can delete just the local cache with the --cache-only option, or keep the security info with the --keep-security-info option.

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 their common prefix, if they have one, using the --prefix PREFIX option. You can also specify a shell pattern to match multiple archives using the --glob-archives GLOB option (for more info on these patterns, see borg help patterns). Note that these two options are mutually exclusive.

To avoid accidentally deleting archives, especially when using glob patterns, it might be helpful to use the --dry-run to test out the command without actually making any changes to the repository.

Examples

# delete a single backup archive:
$ borg delete /path/to/repo::Monday
# actually free disk space:
$ borg compact /path/to/repo

# delete all archives whose names begin with the machine's hostname followed by "-"
$ borg delete --prefix '{hostname}-' /path/to/repo

# delete all archives whose names contain "-2012-"
$ borg delete --glob-archives '*-2012-*' /path/to/repo

# see what would be deleted if delete was run without --dry-run
$ borg delete --list --dry-run -a '*-May-*' /path/to/repo

# delete the whole repository and the related local cache:
$ borg delete /path/to/repo
You requested to completely DELETE the repository *including* all archives it contains:
repo                                 Mon, 2016-02-15 19:26:54
root-2016-02-15                      Mon, 2016-02-15 19:36:29
newname                              Mon, 2016-02-15 19:50:19
Type 'YES' if you understand this and want to continue: YES