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  • 1.  Out of options for vmdk recovery

    Posted Aug 06, 2013 09:52 PM

    Have (2) 2TB SATA disks in my ESX desktop, and one was going bad and failures prevented me from getting all of my data off the VM.

    I tried transferring through vSphere the VM to the other datastore, but it failed somewhere in the middle. I tried taking a combination of everything I had pulled off and putting it on a new 4TB SATA disk that's setup as a datastore, but didn't have any luck attaching the disk to another VM. THEN, somehow I deleted a bunch of files (no clue how), so here's what I'm left with sitting on a USB drive:

    VMWin2k12DC001-flat.vmdk

    VMWin2k12DC001-000001-delta.vmdk

    VMWin2k12DC001-000002-delta.vmdk

    This file I somehow lost entirely in the mix and I last had it sitting on my 4TB SATA disk:

    VMWin2k12DC001-000001.vmdk

    Can anyone tell me what files I specifically need to be able to read the vmdk with a tool like UFS File Explorer? I can read the flat file, but of course that must be my initial snap and doesn't have any of the data I need to save.

    Do I need a VMWin2k12DC001-000001.vmdk and a VMWin2k12DC001-000002.vmdk to get at my full disk?

    I tried using UFS File Explorer to see if I could "undelete" VMWin2k12DC001-000001.vmdk, however when I scan for lost files, alls that show recoverable are awkward named *node* files. Similar if I use UFS File Explorer on the other (2) 2TB disks.

    I've also tried DiskInternals VMFS Recovery 1.5, but on at least one of the disks it seems to hang on a scan.

    I'm guessing I'm past the point of being able to recover, but hoping there might be a slight chance. Any help is appreciated.



  • 2.  RE: Out of options for vmdk recovery

    Posted Aug 07, 2013 05:49 PM

    do you see the missing delta files if you inspect the datastore with vmfs-fuse from a Linux LiveCD ?