Attach an Amazon EBS volume to an instance

You can attach an available EBS volume to one or more of your instances that is in the same Availability Zone as the volume.

For information about adding EBS volumes to your instance at launch, see Instance block device mapping.

Prerequisites

• Determine how many volumes that you can attach to your instance. For more information, see Instance volume limits.

• If a volume is encrypted, you can attach it only to an instance that supports Amazon EBS encryption. For more information, see Supported instance types.

• If a volume has an AWS Marketplace product code:

  • You can attach a volume only to a stopped instance.

  • You must be subscribed to the AWS Marketplace code that is on the volume.

  • The instance's configuration, such as its type and operating system, must support that specific AWS Marketplace code. For example, you cannot take a volume from a Windows instance and attach it to a Linux instance.

  • AWS Marketplace product codes are copied from the volume to the instance.

Important

If you attach an io2 volume to an instance that supports Block Express, the volume always runs on Block Express. For more information, see io2 Block Express volumes.

You can attach a volume to an instance using one of the following methods.

Console

To attach an EBS volume to an instance 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 attach and choose Actions, Attach volume.

   Note

   You can attach only volumes that are in the Available state.

4. For Instance, enter the ID of the instance or select the instance from the list of options.

   Note

   • The volume must be attached to an instance in the same Availability Zone.

   • If the volume is encrypted, it can only be attached to instance types that support Amazon EBS encryption. For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.

5. For Device name, enter a supported device name for the volume. This device name is used by Amazon EC2. The block device driver for the instance might assign a different device name when mounting the volume. For more information, see Device names on Windows instances.

6. Choose Attach volume.

7. Connect to the instance and mount the volume. For more information, see Make an Amazon EBS volume available for use on Windows.

AWS CLI

To attach an EBS volume to an instance using the command line

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

• attach-volume (AWS CLI)

• Add-EC2Volume (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Note

In some situations, you may find that a volume other than the volume attached to /dev/xvda or /dev/sda has become the root volume of your instance. This can happen when you have attached the root volume of another instance, or a volume created from the snapshot of a root volume, to an instance with an existing root volume. For more information, see Boot from the wrong volume.