What does HRESULT 0x80042415 (VSS_E_ASRERROR_CRITICAL_DISK_CANNOT_BE_EXCLUDED) mean?

VSS_E_ASRERROR_CRITICAL_DISK_CANNOT_BE_EXCLUDED

What VSS_E_ASRERROR_CRITICAL_DISK_CANNOT_BE_EXCLUDED means

VSS_E_ASRERROR_CRITICAL_DISK_CANNOT_BE_EXCLUDED (0x80042415) means the ASR restore plan excludes a disk that the backup recorded as critical to the recoverable system state. This is a recovery-plan consistency failure, not a request to change that disk's MBR signature or GPT identifier.

What to check

• Read the backup/ASR Writer metadata to identify which critical volumes were located on the excluded source disk.
• Inspect the restore exclusion list and determine whether the disk was excluded explicitly, by product policy, or because source and target disk identities were mapped incorrectly.
• Verify the physical target chosen for each critical source disk before changing disk identifiers, partition tables, or volume layout.
• If the original critical disk must remain excluded, use a backup whose recorded critical-system layout matches the intended restore topology instead of forcing an incomplete plan.

Verification

The corrected ASR plan should include a suitable target for every critical disk recorded by the backup, or use backup metadata in which the excluded disk is no longer part of the critical system state.

Technical references

• Microsoft: Automatic System Recovery overview
• Microsoft: ASR backup and restore