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Droplet stuck: "Power on" and "Snapshot" both in Executing state for hours - what are my options?

Posted on April 24, 2026

Hi,

I’m looking for advice on a stuck Droplet. The DO control panel shows two operations frozen simultaneously:

  • Power on: “Executing” for 20+ minutes
  • Snapshot: “Executing” for 3+ hours

For context, on the same 80 GB Droplet, previous backups completed in 6-8 minutes, so 3 hours is way outside the normal range.

The Droplet was powered off when I started the snapshot, and later I tried to power it on to proceed with a live migration suggested by support. Now it seems the snapshot is blocking disk operations and neither action can complete.

Questions:

  1. Has anyone experienced a similar situation where both a snapshot and a power-on action got stuck? What resolved it?
  2. Is there a way from the control panel to cancel a snapshot in progress? I couldn’t find one.
  3. Any general tips for this kind of situation while waiting for support?

I have open support tickets, but posting here in case anyone has been through this and can share what worked.

Thanks!



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Heya, @gaboto

If this is a production box and you’ve got a previous snapshot or external backup, honestly might be worth spinning up a fresh Droplet from that while you wait. Depends on how urgent uptime is for you.

3 hours on an 80 GB Droplet that normally finishes in 6-8 minutes is definitely stuck though, not just slow.

A few things worth doing while you wait. Drop the exact timestamps for both stuck actions into your ticket if you haven’t already. Helps the team find the jobs faster on their end. If you’ve got doctl handy, doctl compute droplet-action list <droplet-id> will give you the action IDs too, which is even better.

Hi there,

This is one of those situations where you are mostly waiting on support, but here is the honest picture.

You cannot cancel a snapshot from the control panel, there is no button for it. And the power-on being stuck makes sense since DigitalOcean locks disk operations while a snapshot is running. The two operations are deadlocked and neither can complete without backend intervention.

While you wait, make sure your support ticket mentions both operations are stuck simultaneously, and ask them specifically to cancel the snapshot job on the backend. Being direct about what you need tends to get faster results than leaving it open ended.

Once they clear it, your Droplet should recover fine. Data loss is unlikely since it was powered off cleanly before this started.

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