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

Question

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?

@GordonLinoff: vacuum does not apply here. When a table is dropped, the corresponding files are removed from the filesystem (once the DDL statement is committed). And if there is no file, there is nothing to clean up. At least that's how "normal" Postgres works. I don't know if Amazon did some changes to that in their cloud offering — user330315
– user330315, Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 11:03
It may be that pgAdmin held the transaction open until you closed it. — jmelesky
– jmelesky, Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 12:55

Theo F · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-27 09:38:43Z

3

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.

answered Jun 27, 2019 at 9:38

Theo F

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