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Siddie
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Moved VM contents from failing disk and now virtual hard drive not recognised - any suggestions?

Hello,

I had a Fusion Virtual machine on a Mac OS encrypted DMG file on an external USB drive, (Windows XP professional, running on Fusion 8.1.1 - on Mac OS 10.9.5) and the disk started failing. The virtual machine would boot, but then when I started copying files off it the DMG disk image would suddenly dismount. After many tries at copying the .vmwarevm file, each time the disk would dismount and the copy would fail. I also tried using dd in the terminal, but the same problem.

Then I went to the package contents of the file, and copied everything individually, which after many hours of remounting, and copying again, has succeeded.

I checked the files I copied, that they had the exact same number of bytes as the original files, and any that didn't, I copied again, until I now have all the files.

I now have them in a folder, which I added .vmwarevm to the file name, in the hopes that it would then boot from that. But Fusion says 'The file specified is not a virtual disk' even though I can still get the original to boot from the failing disk...

Inside the .vmwarevm are 32 vmdk files, part of the hard drive image. Most of them are 2.15GB in size, and there is also a VMDK 2kb file, and other files.

Is there anything I would have to do to make this copy into a bootable virtual image? All I want to do is get my data, then I am planning to create a new virtual image for all the data.

I assume some of the disk files have errors, but they are all exact copies of those on the failing disk, and that still boots.

Any suggestions of a way around this please, just enough to get my data?

Thanks

Siddie

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Siddie
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Contributor

Can anybody give me any help on this please?

Thanks

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ColoradoMarmot
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three ideas:

I'd try copying the virtual machine intact, rather than file by file.  Carbon Copy Cloner has some routines that may help recover data from failing disks.  You could try using it to just clone that folder to a known good drive.

If you're sure you have all the files, you could try adding it to another virtual machine, and mounting it as a secondary disk.

If the VM will still boot, do that and then copy off all your data files while it's running.  Actually, I'd do that first - most important thing is saving data, not the VM.

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Siddie
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I tried CCC (it was my first port of call - first files copy, and when that failed then block-by-block copy), but I had the same problem of the DMG dismounting...

Now I am at the situation that the original drive will mount, but the virtual machine will not start. Windows goes onto safe mode, and will not boot past that point. I have two backups of the original, made in slightly different ways, but both have the same situation that vmware doesn't see them as a VM

So really I do only have the backups I made by my unconventional methods. Any suggestions from anybody how I can get them to be recognised by vmware?

I know all the files are intact, but there must be some 'flag' to tell vmware that this is a virtual machine, other than just the file extension. I suppose rather like 'blessing' a folder in Mac OS9, for those of you that remember that 🙂

Thanks

Siddie.

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ColoradoMarmot
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There's no magic external flag, it's an internal check.  Best option is to build a new VM, then attach that vmdk as an additional disk and see if it mounts.

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Siddie
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Contributor

Thank you all for the help.

It looks as if the files are too corrupt to be reclaimed. :smileycry:

I tried making a new VM and trying to mount as a secondary disk, but none of the files were recognised - it would not let me select them at all. The original VM is now beyond mounting completely.

Unless there is some 'magic' app capable of mounting an unmountable VMDK disk, or of rescuing data from a corrupt VMDK, then I have lost it all. I had some of it backed up elsewhere, so not a total loss.

Thank you for the help.

Siddie.

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