All PVs have a reclaim policy associated with them that dictates what happens to a PV once it becomes released from a claim (see [user-guide](/docs/user-guide/persistent-volumes/#reclaiming)). Since the goal of dynamic provisioning is to completely automate the lifecycle of storage resources, the default reclaim policy for dynamically provisioned volumes is “delete”. This means that when a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is released, the dynamically provisioned volume is de-provisioned (deleted) on the storage provider and the data is likely irretrievable. If this is not the desired behavior, the user must change the reclaim policy on the corresponding PersistentVolume (PV) object after the volume is provisioned.



**How do I change the reclaim policy on a dynamically provisioned volume?**

You can change the reclaim policy by editing the PV object and changing the “persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy” field to the desired value. For more information on various reclaim policies see [user-guide](/docs/user-guide/persistent-volumes/#reclaim-policy).



**FAQs**



**How do I use a default StorageClass?**

If your cluster has a default StorageClass that meets your needs, then all you need to do is create a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) and the default provisioner will take care of the rest – there is no need to specify the storageClassName:

 ```
apiVersion: v1

kind: PersistentVolumeClaim

metadata:

  name: mypvc

  namespace: testns

spec:

  accessModes:

  - ReadWriteOnce

  resources:

    requests:

      storage: 100Gi
  ```



**Can I add my own storage classes?**  
Yes. To add your own storage class, first determine which provisioners will work in your cluster. Then, create a StorageClass object with parameters customized to meet your needs (see user-guide for more detail). For many users, the easiest way to create the object is to write a yaml file and apply it with “kubectl create -f”. The following is an example of a StorageClass for Google Cloud Platform named “gold” that creates a “pd-ssd”. Since multiple classes can exist within a cluster, the administrator may leave the default enabled for most workloads (since it uses a “pd-standard”), with the “gold” class reserved for workloads that need extra performance.  


 ```
kind: StorageClass

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1

metadata:

  name: gold

provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd

parameters:

  type: pd-ssd
  ```



**How do I check if I have a default StorageClass Installed?**