# Deleting old persistence after years of abandonend items

**URL:** <https://community.openhab.org/t/deleting-old-persistence-after-years-of-abandonend-items/168807>\
**Category:** Runtime\
**Tags:** persist\
**Created:** [March 15, 2026, 3:58pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/deleting-old-persistence-after-years-of-abandonend-items/168807 "2026-03-15T15:58:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![binderth](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/binderth/32/56257_2.png) [@binderth](https://community.openhab.org/u/binderth)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2026, 3:58pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/deleting-old-persistence-after-years-of-abandonend-items/168807/1 "2026-03-15T15:58:17Z")

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I’m wondering on a simple way to delete old persistence, which is not needed anymore.  
So I’m running openHAB for more than a decade and mostly on a mysql/mariadb persistence.  
over the years I renamed, deleted or otherwise got rid of items. So the database consists of quite a few tables of items, which are no longer there.

is there a simple way of deleting old persistence? or do I need to manually check current items and truncate (or delete?) those tables, which are no longer needed?

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**Author:** ![sihui](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/sihui/32/55674_2.png) [@sihui](https://community.openhab.org/u/sihui)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2026, 4:03pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/deleting-old-persistence-after-years-of-abandonend-items/168807/2 "2026-03-15T16:03:31Z")

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> [@binderth](#):
>
> is there a simple way of deleting old persistence?

yes, for jdbc there are maintenance commands:

> **[Maintenance - JDBC - Persistence Services](https://www.openhab.org/addons/persistence/jdbc/#maintenance)**
>
> This service writes and reads item states to and from a number of relational database systems that support Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) (opens new window). This service allows you to persist state updates using one of several different...

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![binderth](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/binderth/32/56257_2.png) [@binderth](https://community.openhab.org/u/binderth)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2026, 4:10pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/deleting-old-persistence-after-years-of-abandonend-items/168807/3 "2026-03-15T16:10:53Z")

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oh great! Thanks!  
`jdbc tables clean` is only deleting tables, which are empty, but you could use “force” for specific items then.