Volumes that outlive the pod
Pods are disposable. A persistent volume keeps your weights, datasets and checkpoints across stops, restarts and re-creations — and, if you ask for it, keeps them encrypted on a disk you do not own.
Local or network
Both start at 10GB and are billed per GB·month. The difference is what they are tied to.
| Local volume | Network volume | |
|---|---|---|
| Lives on | The pod's own host machine, on direct disk | A dedicated storage node, over NFS |
| Created | With the pod, in the create flow | Standalone, from Resources › Storage |
| Reach | That one machine — the pod stays with it | Any pod in the workspace can mount it |
| Pod types | Demand pods | Demand and spot |
| Reach for it when | Scratch space and weights next to the GPU | Datasets shared across pods, or data that must outlive a machine |
Persistent, and optionally unreadable without you
- 01
Encrypted at rest, at no charge
One switch at creation and the volume's contents are encrypted on the physical disk. The key is never kept on the host machine, so a lost, resold or physically accessed disk reads as noise. The cost is roughly 3–5% of throughput.
- 02
It unlocks and locks itself
An attached volume unlocks for the pod's lifetime and locks again the moment the pod stops. Connect unlocks on demand, and an idle countdown re-locks it — a transfer in progress pauses the clock rather than being cut off.
- 03
Reachable without a pod
Connect opens a temporary SSH/SFTP channel straight to a network volume. Upload a dataset before you have rented a single GPU; preparing the channel takes about a minute.
- 04
Billed for the bytes that exist
Per GB·month for as long as the data is on disk, including while the pod is stopped — those bytes still occupy a physical drive. Deleting a pod can delete its local volumes in the same step; network volumes are deleted from the Storage tab.
Three things worth knowing first
- Can I encrypt a volume I already have?
- No. Encryption is decided when the volume is created and cannot be toggled later. To encrypt existing data, create a new encrypted volume and copy the data across.
- Why can't a spot pod use a local volume?
- A spot pod can be reclaimed and re-placed on a different machine, which would strand a volume that lives on the first machine's disk. Spot pods mount network volumes instead, and those survive the move.
- Does encryption at rest protect a running pod?
- Not by itself. While a pod is using the volume the data is necessarily unlocked for that pod. At-rest encryption covers the disk footprint — a powered-off or locked volume exposes nothing, even with the drive in hand.
Pick a card and start the pod
Sign up, choose the GPU, and the pod is yours in under two minutes. It bills by the hour and stops when you stop it.
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