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Choosing a Mount

Choosing Between a Volume, a Bind Mount and tmpfs

All three mount types appear at a path inside the container; they differ in where the data really lives:

Where each mount type keeps its data
Where each mount type keeps its data
Choosing a mount type
Property Named volume Bind mount tmpfs
Data lives in Docker 514 's storage area A host path you choose Memory
Survives docker rm Yes Yes No
Pre-filled from image Yes, when empty No, hides image files No
Shared by containers Yes Yes No
BookNest uses it for PostgreSQL 1,289 data Source code in development /tmp of a read-only API

Use a named volume for any data the application owns, databases above all, because it is portable, needs no host path and is what Compose 514 (Networks and Volumes) and Kubernetes 5,150 persistent volumes (Kubernetes) build on. Use a bind mount when the host must see or supply the files: source code in development, a configuration file, a socket. Use tmpfs for temporary or secret data that must never reach disk. Nothing else should be written inside a container at all.

Before moving on, remove this section's containers, network and volumes by name; docker volume prune would also delete other projects' unused volumes on a shared machine:

Cleaning up by nameShell
docker rm -f l3-db l3-db2 >/dev/null && docker network rm l3-bn >/dev/null
docker volume rm l3-pgdata l3-pgrestore
Output
l3-pgdata
l3-pgrestore