Users are responsible for data storage costs until what occurs?

Snowflake calculates storage costs based on the average daily storage of compressed data. This includes not only active data but also data retained for recovery purposes. When data is deleted or modified, it first enters the Time Travel retention period, and storage costs continue to accrue. After the Time Travel period ends, the data enters a non-configurable 7-day Fail-safe period. Storage costs are still charged to the user's account during this Fail-safe period. The user's responsibility for the storage cost ends only when the data is permanently purged from the system, which occurs after the Fail-safe period expires.

A. Data expires from Time Travel: After data expires from Time Travel, it enters the Fail-safe period, and the user is still responsible for the storage costs.
C. Data is deleted from a table: Deleting data simply marks it for removal and moves it into the Time Travel retention period; storage costs continue to apply.
D. Data is truncated from a table: Truncating a table also moves the historical data into Time Travel, and the user remains responsible for its storage cost.

1. Snowflake Documentation. (2024). Understanding Data Storage Costs. In "Introduction to Warehouses". See the section "Data Storage Costs". It explicitly states: "Storage costs are calculated monthly based on the average number of on-disk bytes stored each day for: ... Data maintained in Time Travel. ... Data maintained in Fail-safe."

2. Snowflake Documentation. (2024). Time Travel & Fail-safe. In "Using Snowflake". See the section "Fail-safe". It describes Fail-safe as the period after Time Travel, confirming the data lifecycle and the continuation of storage.