When running SpiderOak One from the command line, one available option is --purge-historical-versions. This removes some or all historical versions that were uploaded from the local computer, on a schedule you can specify. This can free up space in your account. This is a powerful feature, and care should be taken when using it since it permanently removes data and there is no undo.
Users seeking an easy method to remove a few historical versions might be more comfortable doing so via the graphical application.
As a local option, it it only purges historical versions from the device running the command. Attempting to run it on a device other than the one you are seated at with --device will fail with the error "Purging historical versions is only supported from the local device". To purge the historical versions of a different device, you will need to run this command on that device.
It is not possible to restrict the scope to a particular file or directory. It will operate on all of the files and directories that have been uploaded from the local computer, including versions now found in SpiderOak One's deleted items bin.
This is a one-off command that does not alter One's historical version retention policy moving forward. One will continue to retain all historical versions as before.
Use
To run this command, first completely close SpiderOak One, and be sure that all SpiderOak One processes have closed correctly. Then:
On Windows
Open a command prompt window. Enter the following text into the window at the prompt, then press enter:
"C:\Program Files\SpiderOakONE\SpiderOakONE.exe" --purge-historical-versions --verbose
If the Program Files directory is located on a drive other than C:, change the drive letter as appropriate. If you are running the 32 bit version of SpiderOak on a 64 bit version of Windows, substitute "Program Files (x86)" for "Program Files".
On Mac
Open a terminal. Copy the following text and paste it into the terminal at the prompt, then press enter:
/Applications/SpiderOakONE.app/Contents/MacOS/SpiderOakONE --purge-historical-versions --verbose
On Linux
Open a terminal. Copy the following text and paste it into the terminal at the prompt, then press enter:
SpiderOakONE --purge-historical-versions --verbose
Additional Information
This command may take considerable time before it generates text, so please make sure to not close the program or reopen SpiderOak before it has completed. For this reason we recommend using it in conjunction with --verbose as shown above, which makes the output less laconic.
This option has three modes:
-
no argument Use the default schedule, which is to keep one version per hour for the last 24 hours, then one version per day for 30 days, then one version per week thereafter.
-
all Purge all historical versions, keeping only the most recent version of each backed up file.
-
specifier Purge according to a schedule you specify. The specifier for setting your own schedule is an argument of the form
hM,dN,ywhere M and N are numbers, specifying how many hourly and daily versions to keep, respectively. Leaving undefined a particular value (as for the "y" or yearly part of this example) means unlimited for that value.
Examples
-
--purge-historical-versions: Keep one hourly version for 24 hours. Following that, keep one daily version for 30 days. Following that, keep one weekly version thereafter. This is the default schedule. -
--purge-historical-versions d60,y: Keep one daily version for 60 days. Following that, keep one yearly version thereafter. -
--purge-historical-versions d: Keep one daily version. -
--purge-historical-versions all: Eliminate all historical versions.
Note that when you use more than one specifier, each subsequent one one begins after the completion of the previous one. This is a common source of confusion.
To purge only historical versions which are newer than a specific date, you can simply leave off any older qualifier. For example:
-
--purge-historical-versions d7: Keep one version a day for seven days, but do not purge versions older than one week. -
--purge-historical-versions d7,y6: Keep one version a day for seven days and one version a year for six years, but do not purge versions older than six years.
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