Difficulty: Easy
Description
We have identified Elastic File Systems (EFS) in your account that appear to be unused — they have no mount targets and no I/O activity over the past 7 days. These resources are likely orphaned and represent unnecessary ongoing storage costs. We recommend deleting these unused EFS file systems after verifying they are no longer needed.
Selection Criteria
The EFS has no mount targets (no EC2 instance, Lambda, or ECS task can access it).
The EFS has had zero read/write IOPS over the past 7 days (CloudWatch metric:
TotalIOBytes= 0).
Expected Saving
Deleting an unused EFS eliminates 100% of its storage costs.
Storage Class | Price/GB-month | Example (500 GB) |
Standard | $0.30 | ~$150/month |
Infrequent Access | $0.0165 | ~$8/month |
⚠️ Provisioned Throughput : if the EFS uses Provisioned Throughput mode, throughput charges are also eliminated upon deletion.
Operational Impact
⚠️ CRITICAL : deletion is irreversible. All data stored in the EFS is permanently lost. Take a backup or snapshot before deleting if there is any doubt.
No service interruption risk (EFS has no mount targets — no running workload can access it).