SnowPro Advanced: Data Engineer · Free practice question 5 of 10
Time Travel vs Fail-safe recovery window
A permanent table was dropped 5 days ago in an account where the table's DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS was 3. The team now needs to recover the data. What is the current state?
- A.The data can be recovered by running UNDROP TABLE immediately.
- B.The data is in Fail-safe and is only recoverable through a Snowflake Support request.
- C.The data is permanently gone — both Time Travel and Fail-safe have expired.
- D.The data is available via SELECT ... AT (TIMESTAMP => ...) for up to 90 days back.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. The data is in Fail-safe and is only recoverable through a Snowflake Support request.
Why: The 3-day Time Travel window expired 2 days ago, so UNDROP no longer works. Permanent tables get 7 additional days of Fail-safe after Time Travel ends (day 3 → day 10), so the data still exists but is not user-accessible — Fail-safe recovery requires opening a support ticket with Snowflake. If this were day 11+, the data would be gone for good.
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