Converter is identifying the wrong source disks

[lunadesign]

I'm trying to move a VM from a free ESXi 5.0.0 host to a regular ESXi/vCenter 6.5.0 host.

In Converter, when I get to the Options page and check the "Data to copy" section, I'm seeing 4 virtual disks when I am only expecting 1.

What's suspicious is that the VM to be moved was cloned (using the command line approach) a long time ago from another VM that had 4 disks with exactly the same sizes that Converter is identifying.  After this long-ago clone operation, I deleted 3 of the disks.  The deleted VMDKs are long gone and don't show up in vSphere Client nor in the VM's VMX and VMXF files so I'm not sure where Converter is getting this info from.  My fear is that some config somewhere is pointing at the VMDKs for the source of the long-ago clone operation.

Any idea what's going on?

[lunadesign]

FWIW, I've reproduced this in Converter 6.2.0 and 5.0.1

BTW, I thought ESXi maintained all VM metadata in the VMX and VMXF files.  Is there some other place where ESXi stores info about each VM?

[lunadesign · Accepted solution]

I figured it out.  Somehow this VM had the same vc.uuid value as the one it was cloned from (my cloning procedure apparently didn't account for this).  It appears that Converter looks up VMDKs by VM UUID and since there were more than 1 VM with the same UUID, it guessed / took the first one it found and was using the VMDK info for that VM.