DEA-C02 Storage and Data Protection Practice Question
If a permanent table in a Snowflake Enterprise edition account is dropped, and it had a 10-day Time Travel retention period, what is the total duration until the data is permanently unrecoverable by any means?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often calculate the protection period based only on the Time Travel setting, forgetting to add the mandatory 7-day Fail-safe period that applies to all permanent tables.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
17 days, including 10 days of Time Travel and 7 days of Fail-safe.
For permanent tables, the data protection lifecycle consists of the Time Travel period followed by the Fail-safe period. After the table is dropped, it remains in Time Travel for 10 days (allowing UNDROP). Then, it automatically moves into Fail-safe for another 7 days. Once both periods expire (17 days total), the data is purged.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
10 days, after which the data is purged from the storage layer.
Why it's wrong here
This ignores the mandatory Fail-safe period that applies to all permanent tables in Enterprise edition. While the user loses the ability to recover the data via SQL after 10 days, the physical micro-partitions still exist in the Fail-safe layer for an additional week for disaster recovery purposes.
- ✗
7 days, as the Fail-safe period overrides the Time Travel period upon dropping.
Why it's wrong here
Fail-safe does not override or replace Time Travel; it succeeds it. When an object is dropped, the Time Travel clock continues to run for the duration of the retention setting. Fail-safe only begins after those 10 days have fully elapsed, ensuring a sequential and additive protection window.
- ✓
17 days, including 10 days of Time Travel and 7 days of Fail-safe.
Why this is correct
The total lifespan of the data after a drop is the sum of its configured Time Travel (10 days) and the system-defined Fail-safe (7 days). Only after this cumulative 17-day window does Snowflake release the storage and permanently delete the micro-partitions from the underlying cloud storage service.
- ✗
90 days, which is the maximum Time Travel limit for Enterprise accounts.
Why it's wrong here
While Enterprise accounts *can* support up to 90 days of Time Travel, the question specifies that this particular table was configured with a 10-day retention period. Snowflake respects the specific configuration of the object rather than defaulting to the maximum possible limit allowed by the account edition.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DEA-C02 question from scratch — 229 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Snowflake exam blueprint
This DEA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Snowflake certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C02 exam.