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In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to inspect, remove, prune, and configure Docker volumes. Managing volumes effectively helps persist data across container lifecycles and keeps your host system clean.

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Table of Contents

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Inspecting a Volume

Use docker volume inspect to retrieve metadata about your volume, including driver, mount point, labels, and scope: 
docker volume inspect data_volume
Sample output: 
[
  {
    "CreatedAt": "2020-01-20T19:52:34Z",
    "Driver": "local",
    "Labels": {},
    "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/data_volume/_data",
    "Name": "data_volume",
    "Options": {},
    "Scope": "local"
  }
]
This command is essential for troubleshooting mount permissions and verifying where Docker stores your volume data on the host.

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Removing a Volume

To delete a volume that’s no longer used by any container: 
docker volume rm data_volume
If the volume is active, Docker returns an error: 
Error response from daemon: remove data_volume: volume is in use - [2be4d9182296…]
Stop or remove the container first, then run the same command again: 
docker volume rm data_volume
# data_volume

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Pruning Unused Volumes

Clean up all dangling volumes in one step to free up disk space: 
docker volume prune
You’ll see a confirmation prompt: 
WARNING! This will remove all local volumes not used by at least one container.
Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y
Deleted Volumes:
  data_vol3
  data_vol1
  data_vol2
Total reclaimed space: 12MB
Pruning removes all unused volumes. Ensure you have backups of any critical data before proceeding.

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Verifying Mount Options

By default, volumes are mounted read-write. To inspect a container’s mount configuration: 
docker container inspect my-container
Look for the Mounts section: 
"Mounts": [
  {
    "Type": "volume",
    "Name": "data_vol1",
    "Source": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/data_vol1/_data",
    "Destination": "/var/www/html/index.html",
    "Driver": "local",
    "Mode": "z",
    "RW": true,
    "Propagation": ""
  }
]
The "RW": true field confirms the volume is mounted read-write inside the container.

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Mounting a Volume as Read-Only

To ensure data integrity, you can mount a volume as read-only. Use the --mount flag with readonly: 
docker container run \
  --mount type=volume,source=data_vol1,target=/var/www/html,index.html,readonly \
  httpd
This is useful for scenarios where containers should not modify shared data.

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Common Docker Volume Commands

CommandDescriptionExample
docker volume lsList all volumesdocker volume ls
docker volume inspect [NAME]Show detailed info about a volumedocker volume inspect data_volume
docker volume rm [NAME]Remove a specific volumedocker volume rm data_volume
docker volume pruneRemove all unused volumesdocker volume prune

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References

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