What does NTSTATUS 0xC03A0017 (STATUS_VHD_CHILD_PARENT_SIZE_MISMATCH) mean?

STATUS_VHD_CHILD_PARENT_SIZE_MISMATCH

STATUS_VHD_CHILD_PARENT_SIZE_MISMATCH is a chain-integrity result: the child and its selected parent do not agree on virtual capacity. A differencing child must describe the same virtual addressable disk as its parent, even though its host-side file length can be much smaller.

This is not STATUS_VHD_INVALID_SIZE, where one virtual disk reports an invalid capacity by itself. Here both files can have individually plausible metadata but cannot form one valid parent/child relationship. It also differs from an invalid file-size result, which is about physical container length.

Treat size as chain metadata

• Record virtual size for every file in the proposed chain, not only the visible child file.
• Check whether a parent was resized, converted or restored from a different generation after the child was created.
• Do not force the child onto a merely similar parent; use a validated checkpoint or backup inventory to reconstruct the chain.

References

• Microsoft: VHDX differencing-disk overview
• Microsoft: Get-VHD
• Microsoft: Resize-VHD

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