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clintboessen
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Mount an ESX VMDK in Windows

Hi Guys,

I have a basic task to do, I need to extract a few files from a VMDK which was infected with a virus on a Windows 7 computer by mounting the VMDK file offline.  The VMDK is from a Version 8 Virtual Machine running on a VMware vSphere environment 5.1.0 build 1123961.

To mount VMDK files offline, VMware has a tool called VMware-mount.exe which is part of the Virtual Disk Deployment Kit (VDDK).  I downloaded "VMware-vix-disklib-5.1.0-774844.i386.exe" from the VMware website and installed it on a Windows 7 32bit workstation.

I then copied the Virtual Machine to the Windows 7 workstation by downloading it from the VMware datastore in VSphere Client.

When attempting to mount the VMware VMDK offline, I get the following error:

"Unable to mount the virtual disk.  The disk may be in use by a virtual machine, may not have enough volumes or mounted under another drive letter.  If not, verify that the file is a valid virtual disk file."

I have attached the errors to this forum thread.  I followed the instructions for VMware-mount.exe exactly, what am I doing wrong?


Kind Regards,

Clint

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Alistar
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Hi,

it seems you are mounting the "raw data" in *-flat.vmdk (ang-pth-vpn1-flat.vmdk). Try placing the "descriptor" .vmdk without "-flat" (ang-pth-vpn1.vmdk) in the same directory and mounting that one instead.

Stop by my blog if you'd like :slightly_smiling_face: I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/

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Alistar
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Hi,

it seems you are mounting the "raw data" in *-flat.vmdk (ang-pth-vpn1-flat.vmdk). Try placing the "descriptor" .vmdk without "-flat" (ang-pth-vpn1.vmdk) in the same directory and mounting that one instead.

Stop by my blog if you'd like :slightly_smiling_face: I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/
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