Replace a volume using a previous snapshot

Amazon EBS snapshots are the preferred backup tool on Amazon EC2 because of their speed, convenience, and cost. When creating a volume from a snapshot, you recreate its state at a specific point in time with the data saved up to that specific point intact. By attaching a volume created from a snapshot to an instance, you can duplicate data across Regions, create test environments, replace a damaged or corrupted production volume in its entirety, or retrieve specific files and directories and transfer them to another attached volume. For more information, see Amazon EBS snapshots.

You can use one of the following procedure to replace an Amazon EBS volume with another volume created from a previous snapshot of that volume. You must detach the current volume and then attach the new volume.

Note

Amazon EBS volumes can only be attached to instances in the same Availability Zone.

Console

To replace a volume

1. Create a volume from the snapshot and write down the ID of the new volume. For more information, see Create a volume from a snapshot.

2. On the Instances page, select the instance on which to replace the volume and write down the instance ID.

   With the instance still selected, choose the Storage tab. In the Block devices section, find the volume to replace and write down the device name for the volume, for example /dev/sda1.

   Choose the volume ID.

3. On the Volumes screen, select the volume and choose Actions, Detach volume, Detach.

4. Select the new volume that you created in step 1 and choose Actions, Attach volume.

   For Instance and Device name, enter the instance ID and device name that you wrote down in Step 2, and then choose Attach volume.

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