What is the maximum time taken for the refresh of a full-copy sandbox?

Question

I have initiated the refresh of a full-copy sandbox.

I enabled Chatter Data copy, and 180 days of Object History to copy before starting the full-copy refresh.

Here are the storage usage details in Production,

• Data Storage Used: ~50 GB
• File Storage Used: ~3 GB

The refresh has been going on for almost 24 hours. There is no clearly defined document published by Salesforce which talks about estimated timelines for sandbox refreshes. What is the maximum time taken for the refresh of a such a full-copy sandbox where Chatter data and 180 days of Object History data is to be copied?

Answer 1

This is mentioned here in Sandbox Setup Tips and Considerations, specifically:

Sandbox copy is a long-running operation that occurs in the background. You are notified of the completion of a sandbox copy via email. Sandbox refreshes might complete in minutes, days, or even more than a week.

A number of conditions factor into the duration of a sandbox copy or refresh, including the number of customizations, data size, numbers of objects and configuration choices (for full copies), and server load. Also, sandbox refreshes are queued, so your requested copy may not start immediately after your request.

So, to answer your question, it may take a week or even more for the Sandbox refresh to complete. There's also another article, that I cannot find currently, that mentions that there are two types of refreshes, namely "slow" refreshes and "fast" refreshes. Simply put, if you have a larger data volume, you may be placed into the slower queue, while if you're doing a configuration-only refresh, you might end up in the "fast" queue. The specifics for what qualifies for each queue is not publicly mentioned, and is probably tweaked periodically to provide maximum performance.