Hyper-V snapshot/checkpoint behavior with physical hard disk

Question

What is the behavior of the snapshot/checkpoint feature in Hyper-V when there are physical hard disks attached to the virtual machine? I have a virtual machine with four physical disks passed through to it and I'm wondering if I will be able to take a snapshot before I try to update the operating system, which resides on a separate VHDX.

Specifically, I am wondering if the standard checkpoint feature will even work, and if so will it create snapshot files for each physical hard disk or just ignore snapshots for them?

Allen Howard · Accepted Answer

When using pass through disks, it is not possible to take a snapshot/checkpoint.  When you attempt to, it throws an error saying that the operation failed due to a pass through disk being present.

For that reason, I started making all of my disks VHDX.  For the ones that would have been pass through, I just make them fixed sized disks.

Staplerfahrer · Answer

I got a checkpoint error "Cannot take checkpoint" related to having a physical disk attached to my machine.
It had nothing to do with VHD or VHDX virtual disks, I just had to go to my VM Settings > Management > Checkpoints and turn Checkpoints off to solve the problem.

Hyper-V snapshot/checkpoint behavior with physical hard disk

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