Adding a Volume without Restart in Windows EC2

When I create Windows Instances in AWS EC2, I usually forget to add a drive or two. With this step-by-step tutorial, I will walk you through how to create a new Volume for EC2 Instances, then make Windows use the new Volume without a reboot.

  • Initial Setup
  • Creating and Attaching the Volume in AWS EC2 Console
  • Adding the new Volume to Windows System

Initial Setup

I launched a EC2 Windows 2016 Server with only 1 Block Device (/dev/sda1), which is also my Root Device.

AWS EC2 Console

Note the Availability Zone where your instance is located, you will need this later. Mine is in us-east-1a.

Looking inside Windows it only has 1 volume.

File Explorer
Disk Management

Creating and Attaching the Volume in AWS EC2 Console

Now we need to attach a new Volume for our Windows Server.

Go to AWS EC2 Console, on the left sidebar click on <strong>Volumes</strong>.

Continue reading Adding a Volume without Restart in Windows EC2