EBS can clone a volume into another AWS account

A copy across an account boundary

On 9 September 2026, AWS extended EBS Volume Clones to cross-account copying. The target volume can use an encryption key belonging to the receiving account.

Preparing a verification environment

A volume is block storage used by a virtual machine. A copy can give a team a starting point for rehearsing a migration or investigating a hard-to-reproduce defect. A separate account could provide identities, budgets and network rules dedicated to that work.

The procedure should still state what was copied and when. For a database receiving writes, application consistency needs checking before running the expected read and recovery checks.

Isolation does not prepare the data

Copying a volume removes neither secrets nor personal information. Test data therefore needs preparation before other people or tools receive access. Key permissions, retention periods and planned cleanup also require attention. The feature’s value should be measured through a complete recovery exercise, rather than stopping when the copy is created.

Official source.

Editorial retrospective: event dates are stated in the text.