Volumes vs Bind Mounts

Two mechanisms

A volume is storage managed entirely by Docker (best for production data). A bind mount maps a specific folder from your host machine into the container — great for local development.

A practical example

Give a database a named volume so its data survives container removal; bind-mount your source code so edits show up live.

docker volume create pgdata
docker run -d --name db -v pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data postgres:16

# bind mount for live-editing source code
docker run -d -v $(pwd)/src:/app/src my-app:1.0