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Unused EBS Volumes

Using the AWS cli it is possible to grab all the unused AWS volumes in an account/region pair.

aws ec2 describe-volumes --filters Name=status,Values=available  | jq .

The above looks for all EBS volumes in the available state, but are not in-use or attached to an instance, and returns them all in JSON format. There are several states to look up.

  • creating: Currently being created and initialized
  • available: Available for use but not currently in use
  • in-use: Currently being used or attached to an ec2 instance.
  • deleting: Currently being deleted
  • deleted: Has been deleted and AWS will reap shortly
  • error: Some error has occured with the volume