Guide to creating and using data disks-Elastic Compute Service(ECS)-阿里云帮助中心

Create, attach, initialize, and manage data disks throughout their lifecycle on ECS instances.

Common operations

The following figure shows data disk operations throughout its lifecycle.

You can create a data disk with an ECS instance or 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) Data disks created with Windows instances are automatically initialized.
Create a data disk from a snapshot	Create a data disk from a snapshot. A disk created from a snapshot requires no initialization. Mount a file directory to use it.
Create a data disk from a disk	(Public Preview)Clone a cloud disk After mounting the file system, cloned disks are ready to use with no initialization required.

Step 2: Attach a data disk to the target instance.

Skip this step for disks created with an instance.

Step 3: Initialize the disk by creating partitions and mounting a file system. A newly attached empty data disk cannot store data until initialized.

Partitioning requirement		Operation
The disk is a raw device that requires a file system but no partitions.		Create a file system on a raw device (Linux only). See Step 3: Create and mount a file system.
The disk needs to be partitioned.	Linux instance	Initialize Linux data disk
	Windows instance	Initialize Windows data disk

View disk information and monitor performance.	View the serial number of a block storage device View the monitoring information of a disk
Back up and restore disk data with snapshots.	Create a snapshot Roll back a disk using a snapshot
Move a data disk between instances	Detach data disk Attach a data disk
Upgrade disk configuration when performance is insufficient.	Change the disk category Change the performance level of an ESSD Modify the performance configuration of an ESSD AutoPL disk
Expand disk storage capacity.	Linux instances: Scale out a disk (Linux) Windows instances: Scale out a disk (Windows)
Re-initialize a disk to restore its initial state.	Re-initialize data disk
Manage disk tags for resource organization.	Modify disk tags

Detach and release unneeded disks to reduce costs.