Removing volumes

To remove existing named or anonymous volumes using the docker volume rm command, they cannot be used in any container (even stopped ones). The standard procedure would be as follows:

docker stop <containerId>
docker rm <containerId>
docker volume rm <volumeId>

For anonymous volumes, if you use the --rm flag for the docker run command, the container will be removed on exit, along with its anonymous volumes. This flag should be used depending on the scenario – in most cases, it is useful for testing and development purposes to make cleanup easier.

During development, you may occasionally need to perform a full cleanup of all of the volumes on your Docker host, for example, if you need to free disk space. The Docker CLI provides a dedicated command that will remove any volumes that are not used in any container:

docker volume prune

Next, we will take a look at bind mounts and how they differ from volumes.