Volumes

Block storage volumes provide persistent, high-performance storage that can be attached to any VM. Volumes survive VM termination and can be moved between instances.

Overview

Feature	AWS EBS	DO Volumes	Hetzner Volumes
Min Size	1 GB	10 GB	10 GB
Max Size	16 TB	16 TB	10 TB
Snapshots	Yes	Yes	Yes
Resize	Expand only	Expand only	Expand only
Multi-attach	io2 only	No	No

Creating a Volume

Navigate to Volumes

Go to Virtual Machines > Volumes > New.

Configure

Select the cloud provider, region, and size. Optionally name the volume and choose a filesystem type.

Name:       data-vol-01
Provider:   Hetzner
Region:     fsn1
Size:       50 GB
Filesystem: ext4

Create

Click Create. The volume is provisioned in seconds.

Attaching a Volume

Select the Volume

From the volumes list, click the volume you want to attach.

Choose a VM

Select the target VM. The VM must be in the same region as the volume.

Mount Point

Specify where to mount the volume on the filesystem:

/mnt/data

Attach

Click Attach. The volume is mounted automatically if the VM is running.

Volumes can only be attached to one VM at a time (except AWS io2 with multi-attach). Detach first before moving to another instance.

Resizing a Volume

Volumes can be expanded without downtime. Shrinking is not supported.

Select the Volume

Go to Volumes and click the volume to resize.

Enter New Size

Enter the new size. It must be larger than the current size.

Apply

Click Resize. The block device expands immediately.

Extend the Filesystem

If the volume is mounted, the filesystem is extended automatically. For manual extension:

# ext4
sudo resize2fs /dev/sda1

# xfs
sudo xfs_growfs /mnt/data

Always back up critical data before resizing. While online resize is safe in practice, snapshots provide an extra safety net.

Snapshots

Snapshots capture the state of a volume at a point in time. They are incremental -- only changed blocks are stored.

Creating a Snapshot

Select the Volume

Go to Volumes and click the target volume.

Create Snapshot

Click Snapshots > Create. Enter a name and optional description.

Wait for Completion

Snapshot creation runs in the background. Small volumes complete in seconds; large volumes may take a few minutes.

Restoring from a Snapshot

Select the Snapshot

Go to Volumes > Snapshots and click the snapshot you want to restore.

Create Volume from Snapshot

Click Restore. A new volume is created with the snapshot's data.

Attach

Attach the new volume to a VM as described above.

Detaching and Deleting

Detach a Volume

Go to the volume detail page

Click Detach

The volume is unmounted and disconnected from the VM

Delete a Volume

Detach the volume first

Click Delete on the volume detail page

Confirm deletion

Deleting a volume permanently destroys all data. This action cannot be undone. Create a snapshot first if you may need the data later.

Best Practices

Name volumes descriptively -- include the purpose and environment (e.g., postgres-prod-data)

Snapshot before changes -- always snapshot before OS upgrades or schema migrations

Monitor disk usage -- set alerts at 80% capacity to avoid out-of-space errors

Use separate volumes for data -- keep OS and application data on separate volumes for easier backups and migrations

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