Muhammad Sufiyan's Blog

What is Mounting and Unmounting?

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Muhammad Sufiyan
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3 min read

Think of your EC2 instance as a computer, and the EBS volume as an external hard drive (like a USB drive or external storage you plug into your computer).

  • Mounting: When you "mount" a volume, you're basically telling the computer (your EC2 instance) "Hey, connect this external hard drive so I can use it!" After you mount it, you can save files on it, read files from it, and treat it like any other part of your storage.

  • Unmounting: When you're done using the volume, you "unmount" it, which is like telling the computer "Okay, I'm done with this hard drive. Safely disconnect it!" You can still re-mount it later, but for now, you're just detaching it in a safe way.

Why Mounting/Unmounting is Needed?

Imagine plugging a USB drive into your laptop. To actually see the files on the USB drive, your laptop has to "recognize" it — this is like mounting.

When you're done using the USB drive, you "eject" it before pulling it out. That’s the same as unmounting — it ensures the computer has finished all tasks with the drive before disconnecting it safely.

How it Works in AWS (EC2 + EBS)

  • EBS (Elastic Block Storage) is like that external hard drive.

  • EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is like your computer.

When you create a new EBS volume and attach it to an EC2 instance, you mount it so that your instance can use it (store files, run applications, etc.).

If you want to stop using that volume (maybe you want to attach it to another instance or save money), you would unmount it.

Basic Steps:

  1. Mount the volume: Make it available for your EC2 instance (so you can save stuff on it).

    Example: After you attach the volume, you create a folder in your EC2 instance, and then "mount" the EBS volume to that folder. Now, everything you put in that folder is saved on the EBS volume.

  2. Use the volume: Save files, read files, or run applications on that EBS volume.

  3. Unmount the volume: When you're done, you unmount it so it can be safely detached from the EC2 instance.

Example of Mounting/Unmounting

  1. Mounting: After creating and attaching an EBS volume to an EC2 instance:

     sudo mkdir /mnt/myebsvolume  # Create a folder
 sudo mount /dev/xvdf /mnt/myebsvolume  # Mount the EBS volume to that folder

  2. Unmounting: When you no longer need to use the volume:

     sudo umount /mnt/myebsvolume  # Unmount it

In Summary:

  • Mounting: Connecting the EBS volume so you can use it in your EC2 instance (store and access data).

  • Unmounting: Safely disconnecting the EBS volume when you're done.

I hope that clears things up for you! It's just like connecting and safely removing an external hard drive from your computer. 😊

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