Contact UsGet started
© 2025 Direct Cursus Technology L.L.C.

Recovering a disk from an image

Written by
Improved by
Updated at May 5, 2025

Note

You cannot recover a boot disk of an existing VM from a snapshot or image. However, you can create a new VM to recover a boot disk from a snapshot. To recover the boot disk of an existing VM, use Yandex Cloud Backup.

To create a disk from an image:

  1. In the management console, select the folder where you want to create a disk.

  2. Select Compute Cloud.

  3. In the left-hand panel, select Disks.

  4. Click Create disk.

  5. Enter a name for the disk.

    • It must be from 2 to 63 characters long.
    • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.

  6. Provide a description for the disk, if required.

  7. Select the availability zone the disk will be in.

  8. Set the disk parameters, such as disk type, block size, and disk size.

  9. In the Contents field, select Image and then select the image you need from the list below. Use the filter to find the image.

  10. Optionally, under Encryption:

    • Select Encrypted disk.
    • In the KMS key field, select the key you created earlier. To create a new key, click Create.

    To create an encrypted disk, you need the kms.keys.user role or higher.

    Warning

    You can specify encryption settings only when creating a disk. You cannot disable or change disk encryption. You also cannot enable encryption for an existing disk.

    If you deactivate the key used to encrypt a disk, image, or snapshot, access to the data will be suspended until you reactivate the key.

    Alert

    If you destroy the key or its version used to encrypt a disk, image, or snapshot, access to the data will be irrevocably lost. For details, see Destroying key versions.

  11. Select or set up a schedule for automatically creating disk snapshots, if required. For more information about setting up schedules, see this guide.

    You can create snapshots of network disks and drives, such as HDDs, SSDs, and non-replicated SSDs, as well as ultra high-speed network storages with three replicas (SSD).

    For non-replicated SSDs and ultra high-speed network storages with three replicas (SSD), the snapshot time is not determined.

    To create snapshots of local disks residing on dedicated hosts, use Yandex Cloud Backup. This service supports Ubuntu, CentOS, CentOS Stream, and Windows Server.

    When creating a disk, you can only select a single snapshot schedule. After the disk is created, you can add a few more schedules by following this guide.

  12. Click Create disk.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

The folder specified when creating the CLI profile is used by default. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can specify a different folder using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

  1. See the description of the CLI commands for managing disks and images:

    yc compute disk create --help
yc compute image --help

  2. Get a list of images in the default folder:

    yc compute image list

    Result:

    +----------------------+------------+--------+----------------------+--------+
|          ID          |    NAME    | FAMILY |     PRODUCT IDS      | STATUS |
+----------------------+------------+--------+----------------------+--------+
| fd8ool134m70******** | test-image |        | f2e3eaei7io3******** | READY  |
| fd8u2d7plgpu******** | image-2    |        |                      | READY  |
+----------------------+------------+--------+----------------------+--------+

  3. Select ID or NAME of the image you need.

  4. Create a disk from the selected image:

    yc compute disk create <disk_name> \
  --source-image-name <image_name> \
  --description <text_description_of_disk> \
  --kms-key-id <key_ID>

    Where:

    • --source-image-name: Image name. You can use either --source-image-name or --source-image-id to specify the image.

    • description: Text description of the disk.

    • --kms-key-id: ID of the KMS symmetric key to create an encrypted disk. This is an optional parameter.

      To create an encrypted disk, you need the kms.keys.user role or higher.

      Warning

      You can specify encryption settings only when creating a disk. You cannot disable or change disk encryption. You also cannot enable encryption for an existing disk.

      If you deactivate the key used to encrypt a disk, image, or snapshot, access to the data will be suspended until you reactivate the key.

      Alert

      If you destroy the key or its version used to encrypt a disk, image, or snapshot, access to the data will be irrevocably lost. For details, see Destroying key versions.

    For more information about the yc compute disk create command, see the CLI reference.

  5. Get a list of disks in the default folder:

    yc compute disk list

    Result:

    +----------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------------+--------+----------------------+-----------------+-------------+
|          ID          |     NAME     |    SIZE     |       ZONE        | STATUS |     INSTANCE IDS     | PLACEMENT GROUP | DESCRIPTION |
+----------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------------+--------+----------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| a7lqgbt0bb9s******** | first-disk   | 20401094656 |   ru-central1-a   | READY  | a7lcvu28njbh******** |                 |             |
| a7lv5j5hm1p1******** | second-disk  | 21474836480 |   ru-central1-a   | READY  |                      |                 |             |
+----------------------+--------------+-------------+-------------------+--------+----------------------+-----------------+-------------+

    Get the same list with more details in YAML format:

    yc compute disk list --format yaml

    Result:

    - id: fhm4aq4hvq5g********
    folder_id: b1gm3og7ei7a********
    created_at: "2018-10-29T07:43:06Z"
    name: first-disk
    description: my first disk via yc
    type_id: network-hdd
    zone_id: ru-central1-a
    size: "10737418240"
    status: READY
- id: fhmo6rdqg5fo********
    folder_id: b1gm3og7ei7a********
    created_at: "2018-10-29T07:33:04Z"
    name: second-disk
    description: my second disk via yc
    type_id: network-hdd
    zone_id: ru-central1-a
    size: "8589934592"
    product_ids:
    - f2en2dtd08b5********
    status: READY
    source_image_id: fdvk34al8k5n********
    instance_ids:
    - fhm5b617fjnj********
  1. Get a list of images using the ImageService/List gRPC API call or the list REST API method for the Image resource.
  2. Create a disk using the DiskService/Create gRPC API call or the create REST API method for the Disk resource. Specify the image ID in your request.

Once created, the disk will get the CREATING status. Wait until the disk status changes to READY before using it.

See also

Previous
Recovering a disk from a snapshot
Next
Updating a disk