What happens to data disks when resizing an Azure VM?

I have an Azure VM instance of Standard A2 size that I wish to resize to Standard A1 since it's rather underutilized. The problem is that I have four data disks attached, but the Standard A1 size supports a maximum of two.

What will happen if I attempt to resize the instance?

Edit: If it allows me to resize the VM whilst retaining the attached disks, can I expect them to stick around or would it leave the VM in an unsuppored state where the disks could be lost at any time?

Solution 1:

You will not be able to resize to a lower instance in this case. Azure will return an error like the one below either using portal ou powershell:

Too many data disks specified for virtual machine DEMOVM01. The maximum number of data disks currently permitted is 2. The current number of data disks is 3. The operation is attempting to add 1 additional data disks.

Basically to scale down you'd have to manually detach data disks before resizing. Detaching a disk won't delete it tho.