VHD Disk Size Limit is Exceeded (code 2016)
Situation
A restore plan terminates with the following error: VHD disk size limit is exceeded. Maximum VHD virtual disk size is limited by 2040 GB
Cause
The maximum size for a virtual hard disk is 2,040 gigabytes (GB). However, any virtual hard disk attached to the IDE controller cannot exceed 127 gigabytes (GB). To support a larger virtual hard disk size, attach the virtual hard disk to a SCSI adapter. When deciding whether to attach multiple virtual hard disks to the virtual IDE adapter or a virtual SCSI adapter, we recommend attaching to one or more SCSI adapters to improve disk input/output (I/O) performance. IDE is limited to one transaction at a time, regardless of whether the bus is physical or virtual. This means that a virtual machine with two virtual hard disks attached to the IDE adapter is limited to a single transaction for both disks. By contrast, a SCSI adapter allows for multiple simultaneous transactions, which provides better performance than disks attached to the IDE adapter.
Solution
Try to select a different virtual disk type. For example, VHDX. This type allows you to handle virtual disks up to 64 terabytes in size.
To select another virtual disk type, proceed as follows:
- Open the required restore plan.
- Follow the restore wizard steps to the Restore Type.
- Select the Restore as Virtual Disk option, then select the Virtual file format. If your requirements exceed the maximum size that VHD format can support, select Hyper-V Virtual disk (VHDX format) dynamic.
- Follow the Restore Wizard steps to save the restore plan configuration, then run the Restore Plan.