When you initiate an EBS snapshot, AWS doesn't immediately copy all your data. Instead, it uses a sophisticated incremental backup mechanism:

1. First, AWS creates a point-in-time reference of your volume's state
2. The actual data transfer happens asynchronously in the background
3. Only changed blocks since the last snapshot need to be transferred

You can absolutely continue using your EBS volume during snapshot creation. AWS engineers confirmed this behavior:

# Example: Safe file operations during snapshot
import boto3

ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')
response = ec2.create_snapshot(
    VolumeId='vol-1234567890abcdef0',
    Description='Production DB backup'
)

# Continue working with your volume
with open('/mnt/ebs-volume/data.txt', 'a') as f:
    f.write('New data added during snapshot\n')

The 45-minute duration you're experiencing is normal for first snapshots. Subsequent snapshots will be faster because:

• Initial snapshots copy all allocated blocks
• Later snapshots only transfer changed blocks (incremental)
• Network traffic and AWS region latency affect transfer speed

For mission-critical volumes, consider these patterns:

#!/bin/bash
# Example: Script to automate snapshots with verification

VOLUME_ID="vol-1234567890abcdef0"
SNAPSHOT_DESC="Daily backup $(date +%Y-%m-%d)"

# Create snapshot
SNAPSHOT_ID=$(aws ec2 create-snapshot \
    --volume-id $VOLUME_ID \
    --description "$SNAPSHOT_DESC" \
    --query 'SnapshotId' --output text)

# Tag the snapshot for better management
aws ec2 create-tags \
    --resources $SNAPSHOT_ID \
    --tags Key=BackupType,Value=Daily

Use these AWS CLI commands to check status:

aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
    --snapshot-ids snap-1234567890abcdef0 \
    --query 'Snapshots[0].State'

For large volumes, monitor progress through CloudWatch metrics:

aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
    --namespace AWS/EBS \
    --metric-name VolumeQueueLength \
    --dimensions Name=VolumeId,Value=vol-1234567890abcdef0 \
    --start-time $(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" -d "-5 minutes") \
    --end-time $(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ") \
    --period 60 \
    --statistics Average

When you initiate an EBS snapshot in AWS, the service doesn't immediately copy all your data. Instead, it uses a sophisticated mechanism:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description "My production snapshot"

The snapshot process works through these stages:

• 1. Initial metadata capture: AWS records volume metadata first
• 2. Incremental backup: Only changed blocks since last snapshot are copied
• 3. Asynchronous replication: Data transfers happen in the background

From my experience managing large-scale EBS volumes, I've noticed:

Here's what I recommend for production workloads:

# Python example to check snapshot completion
import boto3

def is_snapshot_complete(snapshot_id):
    ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')
    response = ec2.describe_snapshots(SnapshotIds=[snapshot_id])
    return response['Snapshots'][0]['State'] == 'completed'

If you must perform write operations during snapshots:

1. Use EBS-optimized instances for better throughput
2. Implement application-level checks like this Node.js example:

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const fs = require('fs');

async function safeWriteDuringSnapshot(filePath, content) {
  const ec2 = new AWS.EC2();
  const snapshots = await ec2.describeSnapshots({
    Filters: [{ Name: 'volume-id', Values: ['vol-123456'] }]
  }).promise();
  
  const inProgress = snapshots.Snapshots.some(s => s.State === 'pending');
  if (inProgress) {
    console.warn('Snapshot in progress - delaying write');
    await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 60000)); // 60s delay
  }
  
  fs.writeFileSync(filePath, content);
}

Use CloudWatch to track snapshot metrics:

aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
  --namespace AWS/EBS \
  --metric-name SnapshotProgress \
  --dimensions Name=VolumeId,Value=vol-1234567890abcdef0 \
  --start-time $(date -d "1 hour ago" +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) \
  --end-time $(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) \
  --period 60 \
  --statistics Average