Guide to creating and using data disks - Elastic Compute Service

Alibaba Cloud disks provide persistent storage for Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances. You can attach these disks to your instances as data disks to store application data. Data disks are essential for instance operations. This topic describes the common operations for data disks.

Common operations

The following figure shows the common operations for a data disk throughout its lifecycle.

Creation guide

You can create a data disk with an ECS instance or create it separately.

The following figure shows the process of creating a data disk separately.

Step 1: Create a disk.

Creation method

Operation

Create an empty data disk

Add a data disk (Linux)

Note

Data disks created with Windows instances are automatically initialized. No extra operations are required.

Create a data disk from a snapshot

Create a data disk from a snapshot.

A disk created from a snapshot does not require initialization. You can use the disk after you mount a file directory.

Step 2: Attach the new data disk to a target instance. For more information, see Attach a data disk.

Note

This step is not required for disks that are created with an instance.

Step 3: After you attach a new empty data disk to an ECS instance, you cannot use it to store data directly. You must initialize the disk by creating partitions and mounting a file system.

Partitioning requirement		Operation
The disk is a raw device that does not need partitions but requires a file system.		You can create a file system on a raw device only on Linux instances. For more information, see Step 3: Create and mount a file system.
The disk needs to be partitioned.	Linux instance	Initialize a data disk (Linux)
	Windows instance	Initialize a data disk on a Windows instance

O&M guide

View the basic information and monitor the performance of a disk.	View the serial number of a block storage device View the monitoring information of a disk
Use the snapshot feature to back up and restore disk data.	Create a snapshot Roll back a disk using a snapshot
Move a data disk to another instance	Detach a data disk Attach a data disk
Upgrade the disk configuration if the current performance is insufficient.	Change the disk category Modify the performance level of an ESSD Modify the performance configuration of an ESSD AutoPL disk
Scale out the disk if its storage capacity is insufficient.	Linux instances: Scale out a disk (Linux) Windows instances: Scale out a disk (Windows)
Re-initialize a disk to restore it to its initial state.	Re-initialize a data disk
Modify disk tags to retrieve and manage resources.	Modify disk tags

Release guide

If you no longer need a disk, detach and release it to save costs.

Pay-as-you-go:
Subscription:
1. Convert the billing method to pay-as-you-go: Convert a subscription disk to a pay-as-you-go disk
2. Detach a data disk
3. Create a snapshot
4. Release a disk

Related operations

For more information about periodically cleaning up disk space, see Periodically clean up disk space.