Hard Delete

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A hard delete is permanent deletion — the data is gone, like shredding a document. No undo, no recovery (unless you have backups). It keeps your database clean and simple, but if someone accidentally deletes the wrong thing... well, hope you have good backups. GDPR actually requires hard deletes for user data upon request.

Real Talk

Hard delete is the permanent removal of records from a database. It's simpler than soft delete (no query filters needed), reduces storage, and satisfies data deletion regulations like GDPR's 'right to erasure.' However, it makes recovery impossible without backups and can break referential integrity if foreign key relationships aren't handled properly via cascading deletes or nullification.

When You'll Hear This

"GDPR requires hard deletes — soft delete isn't enough for PII." / "We hard delete logs older than 90 days to save storage."