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Elastic Compute Service

Basic volume operations

Reinitializing a volume

You may need to restore a volume to its initial state if it becomes corrupted or serious errors occur. EBS lets you reinitialize volumes, meaning you can restore them to their initial state. This topic provides background information, prerequisites, notes, and steps for reinitializing a volume.

Background information

The volume ID remains unchanged after you reinitialize a volume. The restored initial state depends on how the volume was created. Specifically:

If the volume was created from a snapshot, after reinitialization, it is restored to the state of the snapshot used at creation.

A volume that was not created from a snapshot has all its data cleared after reinitialization.

We recommend creating a snapshot to back up the volume's data before reinitializing it.

Prerequisites

Before reinitializing a volume, make sure that the volume is attached to an ECS instance and that the instance is in the "Stopped" state. For more information, see Stopping instance.

Notes

Category	Considerations
Volume type	Only data volumes can be reinitialized.
Snapshot	If a volume is created from a snapshot and that snapshot is deleted, the volume cannot be reinitialized. Volumes being snapshotted also cannot be reinitialized.
Automatic mounting upon boot	If you have configured the /etc/fstab file for automatic mounting at boot time and the volume was not created from a snapshot, auto-mounting will fail after you reinitialize the volume. This may result in startup or runtime issues for the instance. Therefore, comment out the automatic mounting command before reinitializing the volume. For instructions, see Setting up automatic mounting of volume partitions upon boot.
Unsupported operations	The following operations are not supported when a volume is being reinitialized: All write operations on the volume Creating a custom image Starting the instance Restarting the instance Changing the operating system of the instance

Steps

In the left navigation pane, select "Storage > Volumes".

In the top menu bar, select the project and region where the volume resides.

On the "Volumes" page, click "... > Reinitialize" in the "Actions" column of the volume.

In the box that appears, verify that the information is correct. Then, select the option "After I confirm that the Data Volume is reinitialized, the selected Volume will be restored to its original state when it was created." and click "OK".

Next steps

If the volume is attached to a Linux instance and was not created from a snapshot, you must partition and format the volume after reinitialization before you can use it. For instructions, see Partitioning and formatting a volume.

If the volume was created from a snapshot or is attached to a Windows instance, no further action is required. You can use the volume directly after reinitialization.

Last updated: 2026.04.29 14:25:50