Here’s the usual way to get your data back from an old server on AWS: first identify what kind of AWS storage held the data, then restore or attach that storage to a new instance and copy the files out. For EC2/EBS, AWS says you can restore a volume from a snapshot, attach it to an EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone, and copy the files you need.

What to check first

  • If your data was on an EC2 instance , it was likely stored on an EBS volume. In that case, the best recovery path is usually the old volume or an EBS snapshot.
  • If your data was in RDS , AWS supports backup, restore, and export from the database service itself.
  • If your data was in EFS or protected by AWS Backup , AWS provides restore flows for those resource types as well.

EC2/EBS recovery steps

  1. Find the old instance’s attached EBS volume or snapshot.
  2. Create a new volume from the snapshot, or use the existing volume if it still exists.
  3. Launch a healthy EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone. AWS notes EBS volumes can only be attached within the same zone.
  1. Attach the old volume to that instance.
  2. Mount the volume and copy the files to a new location. AWS describes this process for both Windows and Linux instances.

If the instance was terminated

Even if the server is gone, the volume or snapshot may still exist. A common recovery pattern is to create a fresh EC2 instance, attach the old data volume, and then copy the data off before doing anything else.

Common problems

  • The volume is in the wrong Availability Zone.
  • The snapshot was deleted or never created.
  • The data was on the root disk and encryption keys are unavailable.
  • You are trying to recover a database the same way you would recover files.

Simple example

If your old web server had website files on /var/www, you would restore the EBS volume, attach it to a new Linux EC2 instance, mount it, and copy /var/www to the new server or download it to your local machine. AWS documents this exact “restore, attach, copy files” workflow for EBS backups.

Best next action

Tell me which one you used: EC2, RDS, EFS, or S3. With that, I can give you the exact recovery steps for your case.