📦 Resize Root Disk on AWS EC2 (30 GB ➜ 50 GB)
This guide explains how to increase disk size on an AWS EC2 instance when the disk is full and ensure the OS recognizes the new space.
🟢 Step 1: Modify EBS Volume from AWS Console
- Go to AWS EC2 Console
- Navigate to EC2 → Volumes
- Select the attached root volume
- Click Modify volume
- Change the size from 30 GB to 50 GB
- Click Modify and confirm
⏳ Wait until the Volume State becomes in-use again.
🟢 Step 2: Verify Disk Size on Server
Login to the EC2 instance and check disk usage:
df -h
You will still see the old filesystem size, for example:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 29G 9.2G 19G 33% /
This is expected because only the volume was resized, not the partition or filesystem.
🟢 Step 3: Check Block Devices
lsblk
Output (volume resized, partition not yet):
nvme0n1 259:0 0 50G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 29G 0 part /
📌 Here, the disk is 50 GB, but the root partition is still 29 GB.
🟢 Step 4: Install Required Utilities
Install cloud utilities required to grow partitions:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cloud-guest-utils -y
🟢 Step 5: Grow the Root Partition
Extend partition 1 of disk nvme0n1:
sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1
Verify again:
lsblk
Expected output:
nvme0n1 259:0 0 50G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 49G 0 part /
✅ Partition is now resized.
🟢 Step 6: Resize the Filesystem (IMPORTANT ⚠️)
Even after growing the partition, the filesystem still uses the old size. Resize it using:
sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p1
🟢 Step 7: Final Verification 🎉
df -h
Expected output:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 49G 9.2G 38G 20% /
🎉 Disk space successfully increased from 30 GB to 50 GB!
🧠 Key Notes
- 🟡 Volume resize ≠ filesystem resize
- 🟡 Always run
growpart+resize2fs - 🟡 No reboot required in most cases
- 🟢 Works for ext4 filesystems (default Ubuntu)
📌 One-Line Summary
Modify volume → grow partition → resize filesystem 🚀