Use PD AWS S3’s Retention controls when the intended task is permanently deleting a terminated service’s storage. Purge can remove every associated bucket, object version and delete marker; it is not a routine way to resolve a quota or connection error.

Check recovery needs first

Identify the exact service, primary and additional buckets, retention deadline and approval state. Complete any required data recovery before approving deletion. An inventory retained in Activity records what was managed; it is not a copy of the deleted files.

Approve the scheduled purge

1. Open PD AWS S3 → Retention.
2. Select the intended terminated service.
3. Review Approve purge and its confirmation.
4. Inspect the countdown and approval state.
5. Use Hold if the decision changes before further deletion work.

Approval permits the queue to act when the retention window is due. Hold stops future queue work, including further runs of a partial purge; it cannot restore objects already removed.

Understand Purge now

For deliberate immediate deletion, expand the service row, type the exact requested primary bucket name and review Purge now and its final confirmation. This can bring eligibility forward and start or queue deletion; large services can need multiple cron runs.

Inspect Activity and the final state rather than treating a button response as proof every bucket is gone. A permission refusal, retained version, unfinished upload or native retention protection can stop completion after earlier work succeeded.

Never retry blindly after an uncertain purge result. Retain the service, original action time and redacted error while your hosting team checks what remains. The recovery guide applies only to data that still exists; purged data is not recreated by reactivating a billing service.

Check the deletion state

Your hosting team should compare the exact terminated service, complete associated bucket set, due time, saved approval/Hold and latest Activity result with the intended deletion decision. Your AWS administrator should inspect actual remaining versions, markers, unfinished uploads and any access, region or native-retention refusal. Large purges can span runs, and a later failure can follow earlier deletion. Hold affects later queue work; do not assume it interrupts a request already executing.

See the PD AWS S3 WHMCS guide for related tasks, or explore the module.