How do I troubleshoot issues when changing my Amazon EBS volume type?

Short description

The following are common issues that can occur when you change your Amazon EBS volume type:

• The size or performance isn't within the limits of the target volume type that you're changing to.
• The option to change the volume type on your Amazon EBS Multi-Attach activated io1 or io2 volume is grayed out.
• You want to change your io1, io2, gp2, gp3, or standard volume that's also the root volume of your instance. But, you don't see the sc1 and st1 HDD-backed volume types in the dropdown list.
• You don't see the expected performance after changing your volume type.

Resolution

The size or performance isn't within the limits of the target volume type that you're changing to

When you modify a volume type, the size and performance must be within the limits of the target volume type. For example, if you modify a gp3 volume that's bigger than 1024 GiB to Magnetic, then you get an error message. This error occurs because standard volumes have a maximum size of 1024 GiB. Magnetic is a previous generation volume type. It's a best practice to use a current volume type for higher performance. For more information see, Amazon EBS volume types.

Also, after you increase the size of your volume, the new size is immediately available to use. However, if the volume is in the "optimizing" state, then volume performance is in between the source and target configuration specifications.

The option to change the volume type on your Multi-Attach activated io1 or io2 volume is grayed out

You can't change the volume type on your Multi-Attach activated io1 or io2 volume. You can modify only the size and Provisioned IOPS for Multi-Attach activated io2 volumes. See Considerations and limitations for Multi-Attach.

You don't see the sc1 and st1 HDD-backed volume types in the dropdown list for certain volume types

You can't change the following volume types to an sc1 or st1 volume because sc1 and st1 volumes aren't supported as boot volumes:

• io1
• io2
• gp2
• gp3
• standard

For more information on modifying Amazon EBS volumes, see Limitations.

You don't see the expected performance after changing your volume type

Make sure that your workload doesn't exceed the IOPS or throughput limits of your new volume type or instance limits. If Amazon CloudWatch doesn't show that you reached your limits, then your workload might still be micro-bursting. If your workload isn't micro-bursting and you still can't determine whether you reached your limits, then contact AWS Support to further investigate the issue.

Related information

Why is my Amazon EBS volume stuck in the Optimizing state when I modify the volume?