Retention policy

reference · Reviewed 2026-07-31 GA

Retention is separate from storage limits. Limits react to how much you're storing; retention runs on a clock regardless of volume.

The two settings

Workspace admins configure these under Policies → Platform Settings. They apply to all Rescale-managed object storage, whether that's the shared account or bring-your-own.

Setting	Default	Effect
Auto-move files to trash after a period	Off (7 days when enabled)	Active files are trashed automatically
Auto-purge trashed files after a period	On, 1 day	Trashed files are permanently deleted

Read the defaults together

Nothing vanishes on its own, but anything you trash is gone tomorrow

Auto-trash is off, no file is trashed unless someone archives or deletes it.

Auto-purge is on at one day, once a file is trashed, you have about 24 hours to change your mind.

One day is a short window. If there's any chance you'll want a file back, recover it promptly or download it first. After purge, recovering a job returns its metadata and nothing else.

With both disabled, files stay recoverable until someone removes them manually.

What retention does not cover

Retention operates on files, not folders

The policy acts on individual file records rather than the folder structure. A file archived by retention policy may not appear in the Trash view on the Files tab.

If a file is missing and nobody deleted it, ask your admin whether retention caught it.

Retention also doesn't touch CFS. CFS data persists until explicitly deleted, or until an attached job is archived, which deletes it permanently and immediately.

Choosing a policy

If you	Consider
Run short studies and clean up as you go	The defaults are fine
Want a real undo window	Raise auto-purge to 7–14 days
Are fighting storage cost	Enable auto-trash, but tell your users first

Enabling auto-trash changes behavior for everyone in the workspace: files they haven't touched start disappearing from their default views. Announce it before you turn it on.

Related

• The file lifecycle — the four states, and which cost money
• Archive and delete jobs — the job-level workflow
• Storage limits — the volume-triggered mechanism
• Cloud Filesystem (CFS) — not covered by retention