Difficulty: Easy
Description
We identified EBS volumes in your account that are not attached to any EC2 instance and have had zero read/write activity for the past 7 days. These volumes continue to accrue storage costs with no active workload benefiting from them. They are typically remnants of terminated instances, decommissioned environments, or detached volumes that were never cleaned up. Taking a snapshot before deletion preserves the data at a much lower cost and allows restoration if needed.
Selection Criteria
The EBS volume is not attached to any EC2 instance
The EBS volume has 0 IOPS over the last 7 days
Expected Saving
Deleting the volume eliminates 100% of its storage cost.
Volume type | Cost/month (eliminated) |
gp3 | $0.08/GB-month |
gp2 | $0.10/GB-month |
io1 | $0.125/GB-month + $0.065/IOPS-month |
st1 | $0.045/GB-month |
sc1 | $0.025/GB-month |
Example: a 1 TB unattached gp3 volume = $80/month eliminated ($960/year).
💡 Alternative: creating a snapshot costs ~$0.05/GB/month — significantly less than keeping the full volume. Recommended before deletion if there is any chance the data may be needed.
Operational Impact
⚠️ Deleting an EBS volume is irreversible. Always create a snapshot before proceeding if the data may be needed.
Since the volume is already in
availablestate (detached), no running workload is impacted by the deletion.No instance restart or downtime required — the operation is entirely on the storage layer.
Root volumes cannot be in
availablestate while the instance exists, so this recommendation targets data and orphaned volumes only.