# Is there a way to delete old/irrelevant uploads?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-delete-old-irrelevant-uploads/49284>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [August 26, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-delete-old-irrelevant-uploads/49284 "2016-08-26T16:12:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 17

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**Author:** ![MerryMinstrel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/merryminstrel/32/56896_2.png) [@MerryMinstrel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MerryMinstrel)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 11:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-delete-old-irrelevant-uploads/49284/17 "2017-01-10T11:04:45Z")

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> [@zogstrip](#):
>
> If uploads aren’t deleted, then they are referenced somewhere.

I have even tried to destroy posts via ruby console. Even after that uploads are still kept on the server.

> [@tgxworld](#):
>
> How did you handle the migration? There is a rake task that will migrate your uploads to S3.

I used this exact rake task. When it finished all of my old uploads were still kept on the server. After that I rebaked all of the posts with uploads to update picture links.

> [@tgxworld](#):
>
> Enabling the following site setting will clean up uploads from deleted topics.

This setting is enabled on my site for as long as I can remember.

> [@tgxworld](#):
>
> By inefficiency, do you mean old topics with huge uploads that no one ever reads anymore?

Not exactly. I am more concerned with uploads users don’t even have access to. For example, user creates a post with picture in it and site administrator deletes this post. Picture in this post will be kept on the server. And I don`t see any timeout on that. I can go and take a look on posts which were deleted more than a year ago and all uploads are still there, they even have migrated to S3.

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