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After I triggered the snapshot of a volume, I go ahead to work on the mounting due to the long hours of waiting and accidentally deleted the data in the volume. Will the snapshot still snap-shoting the previous data of the volume?

Thanks.

user3227412
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  • You know... you can avoid the long wait for the "real" snapshot ("S2") by making a throwaway snapshot ("S1"), first. Start S1, come back several hours later, after it's done, then start S2 -- it should be much faster -- and then you can delete S1. S2 will be just as good, but much faster, because when EBS knows there are blocks captured in S1 that didn't change before you started S2, so it doesn't have to read them from the disk again -- it uses the already backed-up, unchanged data from S1 to make S2, wherever it can. But you can still safely delete S1 with no danger to the data in S2. – Michael - sqlbot Sep 19 '16 at 22:59

2 Answers2

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For anyone else that got here from a search for whether you can delete EBS volumes that currently have a pending snapshot, it appears that the volumes hold themselves in the Deleting state until the snapshot completes, and then delete - so you're free to terminate an EC2 that has DeleteOnTermination enabled for a volume that you've just started a snapshot of.

Phurl
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Will the snapshot still snap-shoting the previous data of the volume?

Yes.

From TFM (emphasis mine):

Snapshots occur asynchronously; the point-in-time snapshot is created immediately, but the status of the snapshot is pending until the snapshot is complete (when all of the modified blocks have been transferred to Amazon S3), which can take several hours for large initial snapshots or subsequent snapshots where many blocks have changed. While it is completing, an in-progress snapshot is not affected by ongoing reads and writes to the volume.

EEAA
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  • Omg, thanks for you answer. But is there any chance the snapshot to fail? – user3227412 Sep 19 '16 at 14:15
  • Sure, of course there's a chance. But there's nothing you can do about that. It sounds like you need to put some significant thought into your backup procedures. – EEAA Sep 19 '16 at 14:16
  • I see. Alright, lesson learnt, all I can do now is to wait for it. Thanks again. – user3227412 Sep 19 '16 at 14:46
  • A delete is not the same as reads and writes. I don't believe this answers the question. I doubt this situation is in the documentation, because you'd have to be insane to try it. – Tim Oct 06 '16 at 18:41