> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.enclaive.cloud/vault/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.enclaive.cloud/vault/documentation/concepts/storage/recovery-mode.md).

# Recovery mode

Recovery tokens are issued in much the same way as root tokens are generated, only using a different endpoint, and the Vault node must be sealed first. Unlike root tokens, the recovery token is not persisted, so if Vault is restarted into recovery mode a new one must be generated.

Only a single recovery token can be generated. If lost, restart Vault and generate a new one.

### Raw requests

Requests can be issued to `sys/raw` in just the same way as in regular Vault server mode. The only difference is that in recovery mode, `X-Vault-Token` must contain a recovery token instead of a service or batch token.

### Reform the raft cluster

Recovery mode Vault automatically resizes the cluster to size 1. This is necessary because the Raft protocol won't allow changes to be made without a quorum, and in recovery mode we wish to make changes using a single node.

This means that after having used recovery mode, part of the procedure for returning to active service must include re-forming the raft cluster. There are two ways to do so: either delete the vault data directory on the other nodes and re-join them to the recovered node, or use the Manual Recovery Using peers.json approach to get all nodes to agree on what nodes are part of the cluster.