How can I determine if a VHD is a differencing disk?

Question

I have a VHD that I suspect is a differencing disk. How can I know for certain, and if it is, then what parent VHD is it tied to?

Answer 1

This is most easily done by writing a script that looks at the VHD through the WMI provider for virtual storage.

See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc136974(VS.85).aspx

Look at the Msvm_VirtualHardDiskInfo values.

For examples scripts that deal with Hyper-V, and particularly the storage classes, see Ben Armstrong's blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/default.aspx