Detaching an EBS secondary volume

Question

I am using an instance that has an EBS volume attached to it . This volume is used as secondary volume ( mounted to xvdf ) .

So usually to detach the volume i go to volume section of the AWS EC2 console select the volume and click Detach .

But i read on the aws documentation that, before doing the step listed above ,I must unmount the volume otherwise it will damage the data stored on that drive .

" Failure to do so results in the volume being stuck in the busy state while it is trying to detach, which could possibly damage the file system or the data it contains. "

My question are :

1) How to unmount the volume ?(bring off line via Server Manager ?)

2) If the instance to which the volume is mounted is stopped then will the volume be considered as unmounted ?

Answer 1

Detaching a volume is like removing a drive on your computer: you wouldn't do it live just by pulling it out while the machine is using it :)

1) How to unmount the volume ? so you need indeed to umount this drive first. I am not a windows user, but you have a lot of tutorials online about this, like this one.

2) If the instance to which the volume is mounted is stopped then will the volume be considered as unmounted ? If you shut your machine down, you can detach the volume without umounting it (the machine will obviously not using the volume as it is stopped)