I have seen a few cases now where an ESXi update from 4.1 to 5.5 results in severe dataloss on VMFS 3 datastores.
Symptoms: flat.vmdks can no longer be used by ESXi 5.5 and trying so reports I/O errors.
Attempts to extract the vmdk with vmfs-fuse from Linux with the help of dd-rescue produce extracted vmdks with large blank sections.
Lesson learned so far: the best chances to extract those damaged vmdks seems to be the use of a ESXi 4.1 LiveCD. Every other tool I tried failed.
Hopefully this helps some one who may run into the same problem.
I would recommend not to try this update if you plan to use a VMFS 3 datastore with extends. I highly recommend to copy anything important from a datastore with extends to a single extend volume first.
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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...
