The nodes will not automatically delete stale data, to do that you need to run nodetool cleanup.
See step 3 in the Range Changes > Bootstrap http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations#Range_changes If you are feeling paranoid before hand, you could run nodetool repair on each node in turn to make sure they have the correct data. http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations#Repairing_missing_or_inconsistent_data You may also have some tombstones in there, they will not be deleted until after GCGraceSeconds http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/DistributedDeletes Hope that helps. Aaron On 17 Jan 2011, at 20:34, Karl Hiramoto wrote: > Thanks for the help. I used "nodetool move", so now each node owns 20% > of the space, but it seems that the data load is still mostly on 2 nodes. > > > nodetool --host slave4 ring > Address Status State Load Owns > Token > > 136112946768375385385349842972707284580 > 10.1.4.10 Up Normal 335.9 MB 20.00% > 0 > 10.1.4.12 Up Normal 54.42 KB 20.00% > 34028236692093846346337460743176821145 > 10.1.4.13 Up Normal 59.32 KB 20.00% > 68056473384187692692674921486353642290 > 10.1.4.14 Up Normal 6.33 GB 20.00% > 102084710076281539039012382229530463435 > 10.1.4.15 Up Normal 6.36 GB 20.00% > 136112946768375385385349842972707284580 > > > > > -- > Karl