[[path-settings]]
=== `path.data` and `path.logs`

If you are using the `.zip` or `.tar.gz` archives, the `data` and `logs`
directories are sub-folders of `$ES_HOME`.  If these important folders are left
in their default locations, there is a high risk of them being deleted while
upgrading Elasticsearch to a new version.

In production use, you will almost certainly want to change the locations of the
data and log folder:

[source,yaml]
--------------------------------------------------
path:
  logs: /var/log/elasticsearch
  data: /var/data/elasticsearch
--------------------------------------------------

The RPM and Debian distributions already use custom paths for `data` and `logs`.

The `path.data` settings can be set to multiple paths, in which case all paths
will be used to store data (although the files belonging to a single shard will
all be stored on the same data path):

[source,yaml]
--------------------------------------------------
path:
  data:
    - /mnt/elasticsearch_1
    - /mnt/elasticsearch_2
    - /mnt/elasticsearch_3
--------------------------------------------------