VM won't open after Time Machine restore to fresh operating system - file not found

[mickgee]

My mac crashed and I ended up reloading the operating system and restoring data from a Time Machine backup using the migration assistant.  Everything seemed to come back fine, but when I try to open my Windows7 VM, Fusion is telling me that the system cannot find the file.

I can navigate to the file in Terminal. The issue seems similar to the ones in these threads but I haven't been able to determine the fix.

Windows 7.vmdk file not found, but it's really there.......

Virtual Machine will not start after Time Machine Restore to new Imac

I have tried loading older copies of VM with the same result.  I think it's something to do with snapshots or permissions but I haven't been able to resolve.  The new OS is Sierra whereas the crashed OS was Yosemite.

Any help walking me through this would be greatly appreciated.

VMware Fusion Version 7.1.3 (3204469)

[Mikero]

This is a sticky situation.. it's possible you're hosed.

The file it's missing is the main virtual disk file. So, in Windows it's C:\.

The fix is to find the correct file, which may or may not be possible.

It would also have to be in alignment with any snapshots you've taken. If any of the file blocks changed then the whole thing is likely broken.

It looks like it's asking for the base disk so it's hard to see if there are any other .vmdk file trees involved.

We've put warnings up in the UI, and have KB's explaining why Time Machine is not suitable for VM backups, and this is exactly why.

Best thing for you is to contact our support folks and see if we can recover. It may or may not be possible, but someone needs to really dig in to the logs, figure out what's missing, find it, put it back where it belongs, and hope that it's all the right versions of the files, etc.

[mickgee]

Thanks for the quick response.   I don't think the file is really missing because I can see it in a listing from the command line:

I'll try opening a case with support.  I'm ok with trying on older backup file too.  I really just need to recover 1 file off the VM and then I can rebuild it.

Thanks again for the response.  Let me know if you have any other ideas.

[wila]

Hi,

The "Virtual Disk.vmdk" file is a small text file that contains pointers to the other files that have the data.

The data is in files "Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk" to at least "Virtual Disk-s016.vmdk".

As you can see from that list is missing "Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk", "Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk", "Virtual Disk-s004.vmdk", "Virtual Disk-s007.vmdk" and perhaps more (can't tell with the currently supplied information)

The first file is expected to contain filesystem and file directory information and without that I'd say data recovery will be difficult.

But then again, I'm no data recovery specialist.

--

Wil

[Mikero]

Yah without that file it won't be possible.

It is possible to manually create the file, but it has to be REALLY specific.

The UUID needs to match, as well as the geometry. Hopefully our support guys can help tho.

# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

encoding="UTF-8"

CID=fdac65f4

parentCID=ffffffff

isNativeSnapshot="no"

createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"

# Extent description

RW 8323072 SPARSE "Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk"

[...]

RW 1048576 SPARSE "Virtual Disk-s038.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "22975"

ddb.geometry.heads = "255"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.longContentID = "67fc6e29f88495ed61ce2d3bfdac65f4"

ddb.toolsInstallType = "1"

ddb.toolsVersion = "10246"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 92 1e a0 22 82-00 a1 04 d8 cf 74 73 d2"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"