FAQs: Amazon EBS lost volumes

Q: Can AWS restore an EBS volume that's in the "error" state?

No, you can't restore a volume that's in the "error" state. You can either replace the volume using a backup or create a new EBS volume.

Q: How am I notified when my volume goes into the "error" state?

Volumes that reach the "error" state automatically generate an AWS Health Dashboard notification. You can integrate your Health Dashboard notifications with Amazon EventBridge and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). You can configure the alerts to be sent to email addresses, AWS Lambda functions, text messages, or other destinations.

Q: What caused my volume to reach the "error" state?

Amazon EBS volume data is replicated across multiple servers in an Availability Zone to prevent the loss of data from the failure of any single component. The redundancy of EBS provides improved durability compared to commodity disk drives. However, EBS volumes can still be lost when multiple underlying hardware issues impact a volume simultaneously.

Q: How can I identify if I have a snapshot backup?

You can find your snapshots from the Amazon EBS console or from the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) API. You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command describe-snapshots with AWS CloudShell.

Q: Am I charged for the EBS volumes that are in "error" state?

No, Amazon EBS volumes that are in "error" state don't incur charges. The only volume states that incur billing are "in-use" and "available". After a volume transitions to the "error" state, that volume no longer accrues billed gigabyte-hours.

Q: Can I prevent my volume from reaching the "error" state?

Amazon EBS volume failures are unpredictable and can happen at any time. Although you can't prevent your volume from reaching the "error" state, you can achieve the lowest possible annual failure rate (AFR) by leveraging IO2 Block Express volumes that provide an improved AFR of 0.001%. You can achieve additional durability through the use of RAID or similar software mirroring solutions on Linux and Windows.