(Amazon AWS) EBS mount error: Stale NFS file handle

Question

I have an EC2 instance that just went offline (cannot even be pinged) but is still reflected as operational. In an effort to retrieve data stored on an attached EBS, I did a forced detach of the mounted volume, launched a new instance, and tried attaching the EBS volume.

However, I keep getting an error -

mount: Stale NFS file handle

whenever I do so. Did I just lose all my files?

Answer 1

There might be some long running process that is stopping your instance from shutting down; is there anything useful in the console output ?

If all else fails, you should still be able to make a snapshot of your EBS volume and then create a new EBS volume out of that.