diff --git a/elasticsearch/values.yaml b/elasticsearch/values.yaml
index 8bc9e819b..dcb740708 100644
--- a/elasticsearch/values.yaml
+++ b/elasticsearch/values.yaml
@@ -196,7 +196,10 @@ pod:
             add:
               - IPC_LOCK
               - SYS_RESOURCE
-          readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
+          # NOTE: This was changed from true to false to account for
+          # recovery scenarios when the data pods are unexpectedly lost due to
+          # node outages and shard/index recovery is required
+          readOnlyRootFilesystem: false
   affinity:
       anti:
         type: