Data protection You can ensure data protection by preventing accidental deletion of files and backing up HDFS metadata. Backing up HDFS metadataHDFS metadata represents the structure and attributes of HDFS directories and files in a tree. You can back up the metadata without affecting NameNode availability. Using HDFS snapshots for data protectionHDFS snapshots enable you to capture point-in-time copies of the file system and protect your important data against user or application errors. Cloudera recommends that you take snapshots of specified subtrees on the file system.Configuring HDFS trashThe Hadoop trash feature helps prevent accidental deletion of files and directories. Preventing inadvertent deletion of directoriesYou can prevent inadvertent deletion of important data from your HDFS cluster by marking specific directories as protected. Marking a directory as protected prevents its recursive deletion. However, this does not protect against graceful deletion of files under the directory. You can delete the files by moving them to trash.