# Change the Reclaim Policy of a PersistentVolume
LLMS index: [llms.txt](/llms.txt)
---
This page shows how to change the reclaim policy of a Kubernetes
PersistentVolume.
## Before you begin
You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must
be configured to communicate with your cluster. It is recommended to run this tutorial on a cluster with at least two nodes that are not acting as control plane hosts. If you do not already have a
cluster, you can create one by using
minikube
or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:
To check the version, enter kubectl version.
## Why change reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
PersistentVolumes can have various reclaim policies, including "Retain",
"Recycle", and "Delete". For dynamically provisioned PersistentVolumes,
the default reclaim policy is "Delete". This means that a dynamically provisioned
volume is automatically deleted when a user deletes the corresponding
PersistentVolumeClaim. This automatic behavior might be inappropriate if the volume
contains precious data. In that case, it is more appropriate to use the "Retain"
policy. With the "Retain" policy, if a user deletes a PersistentVolumeClaim,
the corresponding PersistentVolume will not be deleted. Instead, it is moved to the
Released phase, where all of its data can be manually recovered.
## Changing the reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
1. List the PersistentVolumes in your cluster:
```shell
kubectl get pv
```
The output is similar to this:
```none
NAME CAPACITY ACCESSMODES RECLAIMPOLICY STATUS CLAIM STORAGECLASS REASON AGE
pvc-b6efd8da-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim1 manual 10s
pvc-b95650f8-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim2 manual 6s
pvc-bb3ca71d-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim3 manual 3s
```
This list also includes the name of the claims that are bound to each volume
for easier identification of dynamically provisioned volumes.
1. Choose one of your PersistentVolumes and change its reclaim policy:
```shell
kubectl patch pv -p '{"spec":{"persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy":"Retain"}}'
```
where `` is the name of your chosen PersistentVolume.
Note:
On Windows, you must double quote any JSONPath template that contains spaces (not single
quote as shown above for bash). This in turn means that you must use a single quote or escaped
double quote around any literals in the template. For example:
kubectl patch pv <your-pv-name> -p "{\"spec\":{\"persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy\":\"Retain\"}}"