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:

1. Open the required restore plan.
2. Follow the restore wizard steps to the Restore Type.

4. 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.
5. Follow the Restore Wizard steps to save the restore plan configuration, then run the Restore Plan.