EC2 instance running but EBS volume inaccessible after ME-CENTRAL-1 outage - cannot create AMI or SSH

Question

Hi,

My production server was impacted by the ME-CENTRAL-1 infrastructure 
event (March 1, 2026). I am unable to recover my data and need urgent 
help.

Details:
- Instance ID: i-0d671d018f7734096
- Volume ID: vol-04ea13ad395e2ddd4
- Region: me-central-1
- Instance state: Shows "Running" in console

Problems I'm experiencing:
1. "Failed to describe volume - An internal error has occurred"
2. Cannot SSH into the instance (connection times out)
3. Cannot create AMI - returns "An internal error has occurred"
4. Instance volumes section is completely empty in Create Image screen

This is my production Directus CMS database for a travel website. 
All my content and articles are on this volume.

I am on Basic support and cannot open a ticket. Is there anything 
I can do to recover this volume, or does AWS have any recovery 
process in place for volumes affected by the physical infrastructure 
damage?

Any help from AWS staff or community is greatly appreciated.

re:Post Agent · Answer

I understand this is a critical situation for your production environment. Based on the symptoms you're describing - the instance showing as running but being inaccessible, internal errors when trying to describe the volume, and SSH timeouts - it appears your EBS volume may be impaired due to the infrastructure event.

Here are some steps you can attempt:

**Immediate troubleshooting:**
1. Try stopping and then starting the instance again (not rebooting). This can sometimes resolve issues with instances that have EBS root volumes and may help re-establish connectivity.

2. If you're able to access the volume at all, you could try enabling I/O on the volume and running a consistency check (fsck for Linux or chkdsk for Windows).

**If the volume remains inaccessible:**
If the volume has been impaired for more than 20 minutes and you cannot access it through normal means, you should contact AWS Support. Even with Basic support, you may be able to reach out through the AWS Support Center by choosing "Troubleshoot" and then "Contact Support" to submit a case, especially given this is related to a known infrastructure event.

**Important considerations:**
- Do you have any recent snapshots of this volume? If so, you could potentially restore your data by creating a new volume from the snapshot and attaching it to a new instance.
- For future protection, regular snapshots of critical production volumes are essential for disaster recovery scenarios like this.

Given that this is related to a specific infrastructure event in ME-CENTRAL-1, AWS Support would be best positioned to provide guidance on any recovery processes that may be available for affected resources. I strongly recommend reaching out to them directly about this situation.  
**Sources**  
[Work with an impaired Amazon EBS volume - Amazon EBS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ebs/latest/userguide/work_volumes_impaired.html)  
[Root volumes for your Amazon EC2 instances - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/RootDeviceStorage.html)

EC2 instance running but EBS volume inaccessible after ME-CENTRAL-1 outage - cannot create AMI or SSH

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