A re-drill replaces one region's refs One RefMap belongs to snapshot s2txcl95uvubmn. It holds the skeleton refs e1 and e2, the refs e3 to e33 from a drill of e1, and refs from drills of other roots. Running snapshot --root on e1 again calls remove_by_root_ref, which removes e3 to e33, then allocates e34 to e64 from the same counter. The skeleton refs, including e1 itself, and the refs of other regions stay valid. The old e3 to e33 now return STALE_REF. snapshot --root @s2txcl95uvubmn:e1 re-drill after an action RefMap for snapshot s2txcl95uvubmn skeleton no root_ref @e1, @e2 kept, e1 included drill of @e1 root_ref: @e1 @e3 … @e33 removed: STALE_REF remove_by_root_ref @e34 … @e64 new ids, counter continues other regions root_ref: another ref their refs kept, still valid