I have about 20gb of space left and rather than upgrading my AWS Lightsail instance to the next level up I would rather just add an attached drive. I have done this and mounted it but I am unsure of what I need to do for Discourse to use it for either future uploads (hey wouldn’t that be nice) or mo…

Well, the same syntax that they use to have /var/discourse/shared/standalone map to /shared. But I think you want a bit more than the syntax. I think you’re more interested in the astral semantics, and I can’t remember exactly all the pieces, especially on my phone.

In broad strokes, you can rsync /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads to the new drive and then add another line in the app.yml to direct /shared/uploads to the new path.

@Jim_Starkweather were you able to resolve your issue? If @pfaffman ’s post helped, please give him a pat on the back for it by marking it as the solution. (look for the box with the checkmark in it on the post menu)

Is there a guide for moving /uploads to new attached disk drive?

Support

nathank (Nathan Kershaw) October 9, 2025, 3:36pm 7

Thanks Jay, very helpful! What syntax should one use in app.yml to achieve that?

Topic		Replies	Views
Secondary drive mounted but Discourse not using it Support	6	74	January 2, 2026
Images didn't load after configuring S3 uploads Support	4	844	August 27, 2021
Migrating uploaded files from DO to S3 Support	3	1883	July 5, 2020
Step-by-step for moving large site uploads to S3? Support	11	1443	August 22, 2018
Migrate S3 bucket to new S3 bucket (compatible service) Support	1	746	March 31, 2022

Is there a guide for moving /uploads to new attached disk drive?

Related topics