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How do I delete my Amazon EBS snapshot when the snapshot is currently in use by an AMI?

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When I try to delete my Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) snapshot, I get an error message.

Resolution

If your Amazon EBS snapshot has a dependency on an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that it's associated with, then you get the following error message:

"snap-########: The snapshot snap-######## is currently in use by ami-########"

To deregister your AMI and delete your snapshot, complete the following steps:

  1. Get the AMI ID from the error message.
  2. Deregister your AMI.
    Note: If you can't find your AMI, then your AMI could be inactive or in a different AWS Region. You can view an inactive AMI if you're the owner of that AMI.
  3. Delete your snapshot.
    Note: You can't delete public snapshots. If you try to delete a public snapshot, then you receive an "Unknown error occurred" error message.
Topics
Storage
Tags
Amazon Elastic Block Store
Language
English
AWS OFFICIALUpdated 5 months ago
6 Comments

Helped me. Thanks.

replied 3 years ago

Failed to delete snapshot. snap-029b12198046d004c: The snapshot snap-029b12198046d004c is currently in use by ami-06f03ed7286ffff49 ami is already deregister and there is no ami attached to that snapshot. Region selected is also correct. Still got error and I cannot delete snapshot. Please help me.

replied 3 years ago

Thank you for your comment. We'll review and update the Knowledge Center article as needed.

AWS
EXPERT

replied 3 years ago

Same problem.

**Failed to delete snapshot. *

snap-059ed0affc2369507: The snapshot snap-059ed0affc2369507 is currently in use by ami-030da7a9262e83c04**

But I don't have active AMI's in any region!!! I have deleted them all.

replied 2 years ago

The AMI could be disabled. Disabled AMIs don't show up in the console or the DescribeImages API by default. There are instructions here for how to find them: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/disable-an-ami.html#describe-disabled-ami

AWS

replied 2 years ago

Hello,

I request you to please review the below article -

Why do I get an error "The snapshot is currently in use by AMI" when I try to delete an EBS snapshot, even though there is no AMI on the account?

Thank you.

EXPERT

replied 2 years ago

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