Removing a volume

The same as with creating volumes, there are two ways of removing a volume in Docker. Firstly, you can remove a volume by referencing a container's name and executing the docker rm -v command:

$ docker rm -v <containerName or ID>

Docker will not warn you, when removing a container without providing the -v option, to delete its volumes. As a result, you will have dangling volumes—volumes that are no longer referenced by a container. As you remember, they are easy to get rid of using the docker volume prune command.

Another option to remove the volume is by using the docker volume rm command:

$ docker volume rm <volumeName or ID>

If the volume happens to be in use by the container, Docker Engine will not allow you to delete it and will give you a warning message:

As you can see, creating, sharing, and removing volumes in Docker is not that tricky. It's very flexible and allows the creating a setup you will need for your applications. But there's more to this flexibility...