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.