A method and apparatus for hard deletion of user data are described. The method may include receiving a request from a user computer system to delete user data. The method may also include determining a unique user identifier associated by a system with a user making the request. The method may also include determining whether a data partition, in which data generated by a job or subsystem of the computer system is stored, is predicted to contain a record having the unique user identifier. Then, the method may include searching, when the data partition is predicted to contain a record having the unique user identifier, data records stored in the data partition for a user data record based on the unique identifier, and performing a hard deletion of the user data record from the partition when found during the searching.