# I Dropped a Table in Production--Now What?

DevFeed: [I Dropped a Table in Production--Now What?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/i-dropped-a-table-in-production-now-what-5766.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://neon.com/blog/recover-production-database>)

Author: Carlota Soto

Published: 2025-02-18T17:03:38Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Blog -- Neon Docs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-neon-docs.md>)

Topics: [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>), [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>)

Tags: [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [product](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product.md>), [production](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/production.md>), [recovery](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/recovery.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [time](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/time.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how to recover a dropped table from a Neon production database without losing data written after the incident. It presents Instant Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR), which creates a new branch at a timestamp before the table was dropped while keeping the existing production branch online. Neon's copy-on-write storage and dedicated compute resources make the recovery nearly instantaneous, even for very large databases, and the article outlines recovery steps using Time Travel to identify the incident time.

## Source excerpt

Imagine you're running a multi-terabyte production database in Neon when you accidentally drop a critical table. Ouch. You notice the mistake a few minutes later, during which your high-ingestion workload continues pumping new data into the database. How can you recover that drop...