Question

How can I move my wordpress media files to new volume and use that for my existing site? As my Media file getting bigger.

Posted on May 13, 2024
Storage DigitalOcean Volumes WordPress Volumes Block Storage
Asked by Abdullah Basar Maruf

I’ve taken extra 40 GB disk space with my droplet to store my all media files there and I wanted to access my existing media file from there and view them as per product images.

So I need to move my previous wp-content/upload media files to new the volume. Here you can see on the image I have 40 GB unused storage. All storage uses data

I wanted to move my existing file there and use them from that folder as I’m using from the main storage.

How can I move all data from main storage to new disk space? How can point that data so that there will be no problem to my product image view?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• May 14, 2024

Hey!

Before proceeding, I would strongly recommend making sure that you have a backup of your Droplet, just in case, so that you can revert to a working version of your website if ever needed.

Once you have a backup, to move your WordPress media files to the new volume and use it for your existing site, you can follow these steps:

Copy Existing Media Files to the New Volume: First, copy your existing uploads directory to the new volume.
```
sudo rsync -avP /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/ /mnt/volume_lon1_03/wp-content/uploads/
```
Backup and Remove the Old uploads Directory: Backup your current uploads directory and then remove it.
```
sudo mv /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads.bak
```
Unmount the New Volume: Unmount the new volume from its current mount point.
```
sudo umount /mnt/volume_lon1_03
```
Mount the New Volume to the Correct Path: Mount the new volume to the /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads directory.
```
sudo mount /dev/sda /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads
```
Update /etc/fstab for Persistent Mounting: To ensure the new volume mounts automatically at the correct path after a reboot, update the /etc/fstab file.

Open the /etc/fstab file:
```
sudo nano /etc/fstab
```
Add the following line to mount the volume at boot:
```
/dev/sda /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads ext4 defaults,nofail 0 2
```
Set Correct Permissions: Ensure the new uploads directory has the correct permissions so that the web server can read and write to it.
```
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads
```
Verify the Setup:
- Check that the new uploads directory is accessible and correctly mounted.
- Visit your WordPress media library and ensure that previously uploaded images load correctly.
- Try uploading a new media file through the WordPress admin to verify everything works as expected.