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Detaching an Amazon EBS Volume from an Instance

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You can detach an Amazon EBS volume from an instance either by explicitly detaching the volume or terminating the instance. However, a volume must be unmounted inside the instance before being detached. Failure to do so will result in the volume being stuck in the busy state while it is trying to detach, which could possibly damage the file system or the data it contains.

This example explicitly unmounts the volume and then detaches it from the instance. This is useful when you want to terminate an instance or attach a volume to a different instance.

	Note
If an Amazon EBS volume is the root device of an instance, it cannot be detached unless the instance is in the stopped state. If the root volume is detached from an instance with an AWS Marketplace product code, then the AWS Marketplace product codes from that volume will no longer be associated with the instance.

Note

If an Amazon EBS volume is the root device of an instance, it cannot be detached unless the instance is in the stopped state.

If the root volume is detached from an instance with an AWS Marketplace product code, then the AWS Marketplace product codes from that volume will no longer be associated with the instance.

AWS Management Console

To detach an Amazon EBS volume

First unmount the volume from your instance drive.

For Linux/UNIX, enter the following command.
```
# umount -d /dev/sdh
```
For Windows, open Disk Management, right-click the volume to unmount, and select Change Drive Letter and Path. Then, select the mount point to remove and click Remove.
Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
Click Volumes in the Navigation pane.
The console displays a list of current volumes.
Select a volume and click Detach Volume.
A confirmation dialog box appears.
Click Yes, Detach.
The volume is detached from the instance.

	Caution
If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the Force Detach button. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures.

Caution

If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the Force Detach button. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures.

Command Line Tools

To detach an Amazon EBS volume

Enter the following command.

# umount -d /dev/sdh
PROMPT>  ec2-detach-volume vol-4d826724

Amazon EC2 returns information similar to the following example.

ATTACHMENT vol-4d826724 i-6058a509 /dev/sdh detaching 2010-03-30T13:58:58+0000

Caution

	Caution
If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the `--force` option. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures. For more information about the `--force` option, go to ec2-detach-volume in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Command Line Reference.

If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the --force option. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures. For more information about the --force option, go to ec2-detach-volume in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Command Line Reference.

To detach an Amazon EBS volume by terminating the instance

Enter the following command.

PROMPT>  ec2-terminate-instances i-6058a509

Amazon EC2 returns information similar to the following example.

INSTANCE    i-6058a509    running shutting-down

API

To detach an Amazon EBS volume

Construct the following Query request.

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/
?Action=DetachVolume
&VolumeId=volume-id
&InstanceId=instance-id
&...auth parameters...

Following is an example response.

<DetachVolumeResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2012-04-01/">
  <requestId>59dbff89-35bd-4eac-99ed-be587EXAMPLE</requestId> 
  <volumeId>vol-4d826724</volumeId>
  <instanceId>i-6058a509</instanceId>
  <device>/dev/sdh</device>
  <status>detaching</status>
  <attachTime>2008-05-08T11:51:50.000Z</attachTime>
</DetachVolumeResponse>

Caution

	Caution
If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the `Force` option. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures. For more information about the `Force` option, go to DetachVolume in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference.

If your volume stays in the detaching state, you can force the detachment using the Force option. Forcing the detachment can lead to data loss or a corrupted file system. Use this option only as a last resort to detach a volume from a failed instance. The instance will not have an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata. If you use this option, you must perform file system check and repair procedures. For more information about the Force option, go to DetachVolume in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference.

To verify the volume is no longer attached to the instance, see Describing Volumes and Instances.

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