Recover Vmdk From Datastore Updated -

: Add the existing VMDK to a healthy, running VM as a second hard drive to browse the files.

Note: This is extremely time-consuming for >500GB datastores and yields many false positives. recover vmdk from datastore

VMDK missing/corrupt? | +-- Deleted file? -> vmfsundelete list -> if found, recover. | +-- Snapshot issue? -> Check for -delta files -> vmkfstools -i. | +-- VMFS corruption? -> vmkfstools -V scan. | +-- Zero-byte VMDK? -> vmkfstools -x repair. | +-- All native fail? -> Offline third-party scan. | +-- Metadata destroyed? -> Raw carving (last resort). : Add the existing VMDK to a healthy,

: Use vmkfstools to create a dummy disk of the exact same size: vmkfstools -c [size_in_bytes] -d thin temp.vmdk . Adopt the Descriptor : Delete the dummy data file: rm temp-flat.vmdk . | +-- Deleted file