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THE JOATMON
Asked: 2015-04-30 07:33:24 +0800 CST

New EC2 server, C: drive is full. What can I do?

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I signed up for a trial of Amazon EC2 and created a new instance with all the defaults. Upon first login the 30GB C: Drive only had 150 megs free. I went ahead and created a new volume and have a D drive, but when I tried to download some installation files in IE they won't even download to the D drive. It acts like it does, but then it says it's corrupt. I'm assuming because the C drive is full. By the way, it is full now. 0 bytes free.

So, what do I do? I don't want to get charged. Did I miss something?

update I created a new instance, during the storage part of the wizard, this message is prominently displayed:

Free tier eligible customers can get up to 30 GB of EBS General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic storage. Learn more about free usage tier eligibility and usage restrictions.

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3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    A default Windows instance based on modern AMI images is 30 GB. This is smaller than the old default of 35 GB. Under the free-tier, you can get 30 GB of EBS volume space each month. But you can have more EBS volume space if you want; you'll just pay for any extra.

    Once the volume is full, the volume cannot be resized. However, there are 2 options that you can use to get more space available in your C: drive.

    Option 1:

    EBS volumes cannot be resized. However, you can simulate a resize of the volume.

    1. Stop the EC2 instance.
    2. Detach the root volume. Make note of the device name with which the volume is attached (eg. /dev/xvda1)
    3. Create a snapshot of the volume.
    4. Create a new EBS volume at a bigger size from the EBS snapshot.
    5. Attach the new EBS volume to the original EC2 instance using the original device name.
    6. Restart the EC2 instance.
    7. Once logged in, go into Disk Management and resize the filesystem on your C: drive to use the entire disk.
    8. When you're happy with the new volume, delete the old EBS volume.

    Option 2:

    Create an AMI image of your EC2 instance and launch a new EC2 instance giving your root volume more space.

    1. Stop your EC2 instance.
    2. Create an AMI image of your EC2 instance.
    3. Launch a new EC2 instance from your new AMI.
    4. During the launch wizard, give your root volume extra space. For example, change the 30 GB default value to 100 GB.
    5. Once your new instance has launched, you can login and use Disk Management to grow your filesystem to utilize the full EBS volume.
    6. Once you are happy with your new instance, terminate your old EC2 intance.
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  2. if you're running MS windows, 30GB is clearly not enough. Windows folder after updates goes to 25GB by itself.

    You should recreate your machine with a larger disk.

    For downloading, depending what you're using to download, you should probably be able to change the default destiation of download.

    But since you're C: is full, it's a useless system.

    You can try to use the cleanup tool of windows to free some space, but it won't be enough or painful to use.

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  3. This is an old question but I came across the same problem recently and found that you can extend the storage for an EC2 machine. Use the Management Console to give yourself more disk space and then extend the Windows volume from within your virtual machine. Instructions are at https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/expand-ebs-root-volume-windows/

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