Solved Is it safe to delete region files?

Hi,

My host requires me to reduce my world file (40 gb) to a much smaller size. I know that the region files are the large files that store the world data. Is it safe to delete the .mca files older than two months?
What are the potential side effects?

 

40gb....holy....

 

Make a backup of the folder and try yourself, since not many people have 40GB ram servers I don't think they tried.

 

I tried on a local server and everything works normally, does this mean it's safe to try on the real thing?

 

If you delete all files older than 2 months it will delete everything players haven;t modified for 2 months. That's a reasonably safe thing to do, but might want to warn your players first.

 

This plugin might help:
http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/worldborder/

 

"region" files as in world guard? so does world guard cause huge map sizes? does anyone know as I use WG for everything

 

Thanks for your replies everyone. I have managed to halve the size of my world by delete the region files. There appears to be no side effects and everything works fine!

@taveergt the region files are the .mca files found in the world/regions folder. Completely seperate to world guard.