Hi, Is it possible to just drop an index of a field without deleting it from disk?

Yes, the dropping of field from schema, only removes the in-memory index for it. It does not touch the on-disk data.

curl "<http://localhost:8108/collections/companies>" \
       -X PATCH \
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
       -H "X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY: ${TYPESENSE_API_KEY}" \
       -d '{
         "fields": [
           {"name": "company_category", "drop": true },
           {"name": "company_category", "type": "string" }   
         ]
       }'

do i need to do this in this manner where first drop and then add operation right?

Yes

Thanks