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Postgres: dropping huge AWS hosted table doesn't free up space


I have a postgres (v10) database hosted on an Amazon AWS instance (which was running very low on 'Free Storage Space'). It had a 50GB table on it which I then dropped (pgAdmin - right click, delete/drop table).

I then checked the monitoring page on our AWS console for this instance. The Free Storage Space graph did not show a 50GB jump in free space. It remained static, even after waiting a while, refreshing the page etc.

Did dropping the 50GB table actually do anything at all?


Solution

  • Close pgAdmin or end the transactions on the database in the 'Dashboard' tab of pgAdmin. This will cut the transactions putting a lock on the database, and the free space will appear.