Recovering files from an Amazon EBS volume backup

Contributed by Jeff Bartley, Storage Solutions Architect, AWS

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) enables you to back up volumes at any time using EBS snapshots. Volume backups can be triggered manually or they can be scheduled using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (Amazon DLM) or AWS Backup.

Each backup creates a unique EBS snapshot. The snapshot has all of the data necessary to restore the volume to the exact state that it was in when the backup was made. You can then attach that volume to an Amazon EC2 instance.

A common use case for restoring volumes is to re-create production workloads in test and development environments. For example, you might take a snapshot of your production database and copy that snapshot to your test/dev account. Then you can restore a volume from the snapshot and attach it to one of your test EC2 instances.

You can also use EBS snapshots to recover files and folders from volume backups where the volume was formatted with a Windows or Linux-compatible file system. This commonly occurs when users accidentally modify or delete one or more files and must go back to a previous version.

This post guides you through the process of restoring an EBS volume for the purpose of recovering files or folders from either a Windows or Linux volume. You learn how to restore a volume from an EBS snapshot, attach the volume to a running EC2 instance, and copy the files or folders to be recovered.

NOTE: This process can only be used to recover files or folders from EBS data volumes. To recover an EBS root volume, see the Amazon EBS-backed Instances section in the Amazon EC2 Root Device Volume topic.

Restore a volume from an EBS snapshot
The first step to recovering your files is to identify the EBS snapshot that contains the needed data and then create a volume from it.

On the Create Volume page, you are prompted to choose the volume type, volume size, and the Availability Zone in which the volume should be created. The default volume type is either gp2 or standard, depending on the AWS Region. That is applicable to most use cases.

The default volume size is the size of the volume from which the EBS snapshot was created. For recovering files and folders, the size should not be modified. Create a new volume that is an exact copy of the original volume.

For the Availability Zone, select the same zone as the EC2 instance to be used for recovery. EBS volumes can only be attached to EC2 instances in the same zone in which they were created. Tag the new volume for identification.

Select the new volume to monitor the status until the state is set to available.

Attach the volume to an EC2 instance
To access the files or folders to be recovered, the volume must be attached to an EC2 instance. The instance should be running the same version of Windows or Linux that was running when the volume backup was made. The instance does not need to be stopped, as an EBS volume can be attached to a running EC2 instance.

Recover your files on Windows
If your files were originally created on Windows, connect to the Windows EC2 instance using a desktop viewer that supports RDP. Then, make the EBS volume available for use.

Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the files or folders to be recovered and copy them to the desired destination.

When the recovery effort is complete, you can unmount the volume and detach it from the EC2 instance.

Recover your files on Linux
If your files were originally created on Linux, begin by logging in to the Linux EC2 instance using SSH. Then, make the EBS volume available for use.

The new volume can be identified by the name that corresponds to the device ID specified when the volume was attached to the instance.

When the recovery effort is complete, you can unmount the volume and detach it from the EC2 instance.

Clean up
With the files or folders recovered and the volume detached, you are free to delete the volume. You can always re-create it from the EBS snapshot as needed.

Summary
Maintaining regular backups of your EBS volumes helps protect you against events like the accidental deletion or unintentional modification of files and folders. AWS provides you with a number of tools to schedule and manage your EBS volume backups. These tools include Amazon DLM, AWS Backup, and manual backups using the AWS CLI or SDKs.

In this post, you learned how to recover files or folders from a backup of a volume that was formatted with a Windows or Linux file system. Now you can quickly get access to your files and folders and expedite your recovery process.

For more information, see Restoring an Amazon EBS Volume from a Snapshot.