Mounting and diagnosing an EC2 volume from a rescue instance

Feb 22, 2013 ec2 aws

Here's a quick way to troubleshoot logs on a failing EC2 with an attached volume.

  • Remove the instance from any load balancers so it won't be dropped from a healthcheck
  • Take a snapshot of the volume you're having trouble with
  • Create a rescue instance in the same AWS Account and using the Ec2 Add Storage step attach a new volume which uses the snapshot you created mapped to device xvd*
    screenshot
  • Start up your instance and connect remotely
  • Using diskmgmt.msc browse and mount the drive
  • Use file explorer to find your device and explore as a regular hard drive

Having trouble mapping your device? See Mapping Disks to Volumes on your EC2 instance for the documentation on the device names.