Add EBS to Ubuntu EC2 Instance

Since this is a new volume, you need to format the EBS volume (block device) with a file system between step 1 and step 2. So the entire process with your sample mount point is:

1. Create EBS volume.

2. Attach EBS volume to /dev/sdf (EC2’s external name for this particular device number).

3. Format file system /dev/xvdf (Ubuntu’s internal name for this particular device number):

   sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdf
   

   Only format the file system if this is a new volume with no data on it. Formatting will make it difficult or impossible to retrieve any data that was on this volume previously.

4. Mount file system (with update to /etc/fstab so it stays mounted on reboot):

   sudo mkdir -m 000 /vol
   echo "/dev/xvdf /vol auto noatime 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
   sudo mount /vol