How to tell if disk volume is instance store or EBS?

Question

I have a number of volumes (same size) attached to a Windows instance in Amazon AWS.

One of them is told to be an instance store.

How do I tell which one?

PS. testing the speed did not help, one of the drives IS slightly faster than the others but how I can be sure it's an instance store?

AWS control panel -> EC2 dashboard -> Elastic Block Store -> Volumes. You can see EBS volumes here, plus the type (ssd, magnetic). If it's not listed here, I would assume it's an instance store. — jlehtinen, Mar 16 '15 at 16:20
@jlehtinen that list shows EBS volumes only, with EBS VOLUME TYPES. Instance-store disks are not shown there. — jitbit, Mar 16 '15 at 17:00
... if the volume isn't a listed EBS volume, then it's an instance store, right? — jlehtinen, Mar 16 '15 at 18:00
@jlehtinen but how do I tell which windows disk is which volume? Thats the question. They all look the same in Device Manager. "XENSRC PVDISK SCSI Disk Device" — jitbit, Mar 17 '15 at 09:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 12 '18 at 19:53

Use Get-Disk command.

For Windows 2012 command would look like:

Get-Disk | Select Number,SerialNumber | Sort-Object Number

For Windows 2016 command would look like:

Get-Disk | Select Number,AdapterSerialNumber | Sort-Object Number

If a SerialNumber is not starting as "VOL..." that disk is an instance store. You can go to "Computer Management" -> "Disk Management" to map disk Number to DrivesLetters.

More details: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/nvme-ebs-volumes.html#identify-nvme-ebs-device

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 07 '17 at 13:32

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I have been researching this and found this page in the AWS documentation - https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/. Only certain instances come with ephemeral storage.

answered Apr 07 '17 at 13:32

Thomas Milliken

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Welcome to Server Fault. Your post needs to be expanded. A good [answer](http://serverfault.com/help/how-to-answer) includes specific instructions ([not just links](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8231/are-answers-that-just-contain-links-elsewhere-really-good-answers/8259#8259) to them) and an explanation as to how or why the answer addresses the OPs question. Please edit your post to adequately address both of these elements. – I say Reinstate Monica Apr 07 '17 at 15:24

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 08 '17 at 17:35

Answering my own question.

Go to "Computer management" - "disk management" - Right-click the gray pane labeled Disk 1, and then select Properties.

Note the value of Location and look it up in the tables in Disk Device to Device Name Mapping here https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2-windows-volumes.html#windows-volume-mapping

How to tell if disk volume is instance store or EBS?

3 Answers3