How do I troubleshoot an Amazon EBS volume that's stuck in the "deleting" state?

Resolution

An Amazon EBS volume can get stuck in the deleting state when an active snapshot creation process is in progress for the volume. If you make a CreateSnapshot API call immediately before a DeleteVolume request, then the volume waits to delete until the snapshot creation completes.

Check for in-progress snapshots associated with the volume

Note: If you receive errors when you run AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, then see Troubleshooting errors for the AWS CLI. Also, make sure that you're using the most recent AWS CLI version.

Complete the following steps:

1. To identify snapshots in the pending state for your volume, run the following describe-snapshots AWS CLI command:

   aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
       --filters Name=volume-id,Values=VOLUME_ID Name=status,Values=pending \
       --query "Snapshots[*].{ID:SnapshotId,Time:StartTime,Progress:Progress}" \
       --region REGION

   Note: Replace VOLUME_ID with your Amazon EBS volume ID and REGION with your AWS Region.

2. Review the output. If the command returns snapshots in the pending state, then those snapshots delay the volume deletion until they complete.

3. To check the volume state after Amazon EBS creates the snapshot, run the following describe-volumes AWS CLI command:

   aws ec2 describe-volumes --volume-ids VOLUME_ID --region REGION

   Note: Replace VOLUME_ID with your Amazon EBS volume ID and REGION with your Region.

The output shows whether Amazon EBS successfully deleted the volume.

Review CreateSnapshot events in CloudTrail

If you can't identify in-progress snapshots, review AWS CloudTrail for recent CreateSnapshot API calls on the volume.

Complete the following steps:

1. Open the CloudTrail console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Event history.
3. For Lookup attributes, choose Event name.
4. In the search box, enter and then choose CreateSnapshot.
5. Review the events to identify CreateSnapshot calls associated with your volume.

Note: Volume workflows are asynchronous. Volume deletion might still be delayed after a snapshot creation completes.

Related information

Delete an Amazon EBS volume

View Amazon EBS snapshot information