Solve: How to add an EBS volume to a Windows EC2 instance and configure it

This post is divided in two sections. In the first section you will see how to create an EBS volume and in the next section we will show you how to configure the EBS volume in windows instance.
Create EBS Volume

• Go to AWS Console > EC2
• In the left panel select “Volumes” .
• Once in the “Volume” screen select “Create Volume”
• In the “Create Volume” window specify the size of disk and the Availability Zone  in which you want the disk to be created.

Tip:- The disk should be in same AZ as your EC2 instance.

• Now in the left pane again select the “Volume” to see all your volumes.
• Select the volume you just created and after that in the upper menu click on “Actions” and select “Attach volume”
• In “Attach volume” window select the instance to which you want to attach the volume and click on “Attach”.

Configure EBS volume in Windows

• Login to your windows EC2 instance using RDP. Once inside the instance, from the Start menu go to  “Computer Management” as mentioned below.

Start > Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

• Click on Disk Management on the left pane.
• Here we can see the new disk but it’s still offline. Right click on the new disk and select “Online”.

• Once the disk is online right click again on the disk and select “Initialize Disk”.

• If disk is below 2TB, select MBR and click OK

• Finally right click on the pane where size is shown(refer image below). Select “New Simple Volume”

• Leave other options as default and click “Next” till you come to “Assign Drive Letter or Path”.  Here we have assigned the drive letter E .

• Leave everything else as default in next windows and click on finish.

• Now if we go to “This PC/ My computer” we should see the new disk.

So here we have attached an EBS volume to the Windows EC2 instance. Do let us know in comments section if you have any query.