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madajiq
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Accidentally deleted -000001-delta.vmdk file

Hi guys,

I have accidentally deleted 1 -000001-delta.vmdk file from the snapshot browser. Currently i have tried few options including using third party software such as diskinternals but still can't retrieve the lost vmdk file or restore my VM state.

Currently my VM has these files:

pastedImage_0.png

Is there any other way that I can recover my deleted -000001-delta.vmdk or re-create a new VM with the same settings and import the main VMDK file from the previous snapshot ?

Below is my previous references but not sure if it is the solution to my problem, but mostly suggest to recreate VM with same settings and import the -flat.vmdk file and everything will be fine.

Can you recover an accidentally deleted VMDK file?

How to recover deleted vmdk - best way to proceed?

https://serverfault.com/questions/847326/recover-deleted-vmware-virtual-disks-i-e-vmdk-files

Thank you

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madajiq
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Hi continuum

I believed i accidentally solve it by editing the .VMX file and point it to the available .VMDK.

The VM then booted up normally although it is using the previous month backup instead of the latest.

Appreciate all your help. Thank you

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lucasbernadsky
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Hi there!

Sorry to hear that.

Since VMDK is aiming to that delta file, you may want to recreate a VMDK based on vmdk-flat: Here is how you can do it: VMware Knowledge Base

And here it is the same procedure in video: YouTube

Hope it can solve it!

Regards

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continuum
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Please do NOT follow the advice given above - it would be contraproductive in your case.

You are apparently missing

Windows 2012 R2-000001-delta.vmdk.

How exactly did you delete it ? - with the datastorebrowser or from the snapshot-manager ?

I may eventually be able to extract the delta.vmdk when you send a VMFS header-dump - see

Create a VMFS-Header-dump using an ESXi-Host in production | VM-Sickbay
In worst case scan the whole datastore for the COWD signature and hope that the delta was written in one piece (not very likely ....)


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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 ...

lucasbernadsky
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Oh, ok.

Didn't know that! Just wanted to help!

Hope you can solve your problem

madajiq
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Hi continuum,

Thank you for your respond. Kindly find below for the answers to your questions.

How exactly did you delete it ?

- I deleted it from the datastorebrowser. (sorry my post said snapshot browser and that might confused you).

Will try the steps provided in the links and get back here with the data dumps.

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continuum
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Hi

if you use ESXi 6 or later the chances are not that good - but lets try anyway

Ulli


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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madajiq
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continuum

if you use ESXi 6 or later the chances are not that good - but lets try anyway

well that's bad news, current running version is ESXi 6.0.0 with vmfs version 5.

But here is the download link for the data dump.  - Size 249MB

Please let me know if u need any other info. Is there any guide/manual/kb on what are you going to do ?

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continuum
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Hi

that dump is truncated - it should be 1536 mb but is just 250mb.

Did you run out of free space in /tmp ?

Try to store the dump in an unaffected datastore or use the gzip option.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

madajiq
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Hi continuum

I believed i accidentally solve it by editing the .VMX file and point it to the available .VMDK.

The VM then booted up normally although it is using the previous month backup instead of the latest.

Appreciate all your help. Thank you

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IRIX201110141
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Congrats,

you place the VM 4 month into the past and lost as a minimum 200GB of data (Snapshot2)?

Regards,
Joerg

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madajiq
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Hi IRIX201110141

Yes unfortunately i have to restore to past 4 month backup as the VM is needed to be powered up immediately and the only solution to this was to re-point the VMX to the old snapshot image.

There wasn't much data in the server, so by restoring configuration and the database all things is working fine.

This solution was not meant to who was looking to get back all their data. Just a quick solution to power up a corrupted VM.

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daphnissov
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Why don't you fix this issue from occurring in the future by not using snapshots as backups? What you're doing by persisting multiple snapshots on a VM (and causing them to grow in size) is asking for trouble. This is why so many people come here freaking out that their VMs are broken.

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madajiq
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Hi daphnissov

Appreciate if you can suggest a good article on what is the best practice on creating a VM backup.

I read on so many articles on how snapshot is bad for a long term backup but still was not able to find the best and easy way to perform VM backup except using a third party software.

So far for other VM what i do is download all the VM file in the databrowser and stored it externally. but for this particular VM, the image was at 1.5TB and it was too big to always be extracted out every month. May want to hear you professional advise regarding this.

Thank you!

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daphnissov
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My advice, both professionally and personally, is to get and use a third-party backup tool. A community favorite seems to be Veeam, but there are many others. Using the datastore browser to manually download files is not a backup method and often results in corrupt files. Using a third-party tool is the most reliable and safest method to ensure you protect your data appropriately.