Delete an Amazon EBS volume - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Delete an Amazon EBS volume

You can delete an Amazon EBS volume that you no longer need. After deletion, its data is gone and the volume can't be attached to any instance. So before deletion, you can store a snapshot of the volume, which you can use to re-create the volume later.

Note

You can't delete a volume if it's attached to an instance. To delete a volume, you must first detach it. For more information, see Detach an Amazon EBS volume from a Linux instance.

You can check if a volume is attached to an instance. In the console, on the Volumes page, you can view the state of your volumes.

  • If a volume is attached to an instance, it’s in the in-use state.

  • If a volume is detached from an instance, it’s in the available state. You can delete this volume.

You can delete an EBS volume using one of the following methods.

New console

To delete an EBS volume using the console

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Volumes.

  3. Select the volume to delete and choose Actions, Delete volume.

    Note

    If Delete volume is greyed out, the volume is attached to an instance. You must detach the volume from the instance before it can be deleted.

  4. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Delete.

Old console

To delete an EBS volume using the console

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Volumes.

  3. Select a volume and choose Actions, Delete Volume. If Delete Volume is greyed out, the volume is attached to an instance.

  4. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Yes, Delete.

AWS CLI

To delete an EBS volume using the command line

You can use one of the following commands. For more information about these command line interfaces, see Access Amazon EC2.