What does HRESULT 0x8004253E (VDS_E_PARTITION_NOT_CYLINDER_ALIGNED) mean?

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An MBR partition boundary violates the expected cylinder alignment.

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VDS_E_DRIVER_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND	VDS_E_DISK_LAYOUT_PARTITIONS_TOO_SMALL

VDS_E_PARTITION_NOT_CYLINDER_ALIGNED

This is a layout-validation error associated with legacy cylinder alignment rules. VDS documents that older partition-creation behavior rounds unaligned MBR offsets to cylinder boundaries, while GPT uses sector alignment. The error therefore belongs to the geometry of the supplied or discovered partition table, not to NTFS cluster alignment.

Why this state matters

Inspect the exact byte offsets returned in VDS_PARTITION_PROP. Do not derive alignment from partition numbers or drive letters. On imported or externally edited MBR media, compare each start boundary with the geometry assumptions used by the provider. Modern 1 MB alignment guidance does not retroactively explain a legacy VDS cylinder check; preserve the actual VDS method and platform version involved.

Diagnostic focus

Confirm the disk is using MBR rather than GPT partition style.
Dump ullOffset and ullSize for every partition before attempting normalization.
Identify whether the table was created by VDS or modified by another partitioning tool.
Distinguish legacy cylinder-boundary validation from file-system cluster size and modern 1 MB alignment.

Technical references

IVdsCreatePartitionEx::CreatePartitionEx · VDS_PARTITION_PROP · VDS_PARTITION_STYLE · IVdsAdvancedDisk::QueryPartitions · MS-VDS error codes

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