Manage Block Storage volumes with the Linode API

The Linode API lets you create, delete, attach, detach, clone, and resize Block Storage volumes.

Before you begin

You need a Personal Access Token for the Linode API to complete the steps in this guide. See Manage personal access tokens for more information.

Store the token as a temporary shell variable to simplify repeated requests. Replace <Access Token> in this example with your token:

export TOKEN=<token-string>

Create a Block Storage volume

Create a new Block Storage volume by making a POST request to the /volumes endpoint. You can also automatically attach the new volume to an existing Compute Instance by passing the instance's ID when creating the volume.

List the Compute Instances on your account:
```
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/linode/instances
```
Choose a Compute Instance from the returned list and copy its id and region values.

Create a volume in the same region as the target instance. Use the ID of the target instance and adjust the size (in GB), region, and label to the desired values:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -X POST -d '{
      "label": "my-volume",
      "region": "us-east",
      "size": 100,
      "linode_id": 1234567
    }' \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes

📘
The volume and Compute Instance must be in the same region.

Examine the response JSON object and copy the values in the id and filesystem_path fields:

{
  "linode_id":1234567,
  "label":"my-volume",
  "size":100,
  "updated":"2018-05-07T14:59:48",
  "created":"2018-05-07T14:59:48",
  "id":6830,
  "status":"creating",
  "region":"us-east",
  "filesystem_path":"/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0Linode_Volume_my-volume"
}

Query the volume using the /volumes/$volume_id endpoint to make sure it was successfully created:
```
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id
```
If the status field in the response is active, your volume is ready to use.

Mount the volume

The API can't directly mount the new volume after it is attached. SSH into the Linode and mount it manually:

Create a filesystem on the volume:
```
mkfs.ext4 $volume_path
```
Create a mountpoint:
```
mkdir /mnt/my-volume
```
Mount the volume:
```
mount $volume_path /mnt/my-volume
```
To automatically mount the volume every time your Compute Instance boots, add the following line to your /etc/fstab file:
```
$volume_path /mnt/my-volume defaults 0 2
```

Attach and detach the volume

If you did not specify a Compute Instance when creating the volume, or would like to attach it to a different instance, use the /attach and /detach endpoints:

Detach the volume. Replace $volume_id with the volume ID from the previous section:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -X POST \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id/detach

Attach the volume to the new target Compute Instance:
```
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST -d \
    '{ "linode_id": $linode-id }' \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id/attach
```
📘
If a Compute Instance is not running and has more than one configuration profile, include a config_id parameter in the POST request to specify which profile to use. If you do not specify a profile, the first profile will be used by default.

Clone a volume

To copy all of the data in a Block Storage volume to a new volume:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -X POST -d '{
      "label": "new-volume"
    }' \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id/clone

Delete a volume

Remove a volume from your account with a DELETE request. If the volume is attached to a Compute Instance, you will have to detach it before it can be deleted:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -X DELETE \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id

Resize a volume

If you need additional space, you can increase the size of a volume through the API. It is not possible to reduce the size of a volume.

Pass the desired size (in gigabytes) using the size parameter:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" \
    -X POST -d '{
        "size": 200
    }' \
    https://api.linode.com/v4/volumes/$volume_id/resize

📘
After resizing the volume, you also need to resize the file system to accommodate the additional space. For instructions, see the last few steps on the Resize a volume guide.

Updated about 2 months ago