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Clarkington
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Why do I have [VM name]_1.vmdk, _2.vmdk with no snapshots?

Hello,

I'm trying to consolidate my VMs to a small file size so I can transfer them to a new server. I have had a number of snapshots for a long time previously. I deleted all the snapshots so the VM is flat. Next, I looked at the files in the datastore for the VM. I see the following large files:

[VM name].vmdk

[VM name]_1.vmdk

[VM name]_2.vmdk

All three are the same size, and all three are the size of the VM's hard disk. The VM is using [VM name]_2.vmdk as the drive.

Why are three what appear to be three copies of the hard disk file? Is there a way to merge them so I only have to transfer one?

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continuum
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probably only one is uptodate - the other two may have been replaced in the history of the VM

use a temporary VM with a Linux LiveCD and inspect whats in the unused 2 disks - then you will know whether the disks are trash or valuable


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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 ...

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weinstein5
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It sounds like when you created your VM you created 3 virtual disks - each virtual disk is stored in its own VMDK file - no there is no real way to merge

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continuum
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probably only one is uptodate - the other two may have been replaced in the history of the VM

use a temporary VM with a Linux LiveCD and inspect whats in the unused 2 disks - then you will know whether the disks are trash or valuable


________________________________________________
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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anandprakash
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Hi,

Could you please mound these drives and check the contents. You never know what hidden information they have.

I would recommend to check this before you take a decision.

Regards,

Anand Prakash

Regards, Anand
Clarkington
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This is a lab environment that has many snapshots, rollbacks, rollforwards, renaming of VMs and some reconfiguration. I checked all the VMs and in almost every case, the number of .vmdks is equal to the number of snapshots, +1. This makes sense as each snapshot creates a .vmdk and you always start out with a default one. With each snapshot .vmdk, the provisioned size is larger than the actual size.

In this case the size is identical each time. Due to lack of historical records, I am going to assume that some operation was done in the past that duplicated the disks. The good news is this VM was a test VM i was using for testing copying and my "critical" VMs don't have any duplicate disks. I've now been able to prove, thanks to you guys, that the VMs I do have with multiple disks, besides this one, all have multiple disks configured.

I really appreciate the help and feel much more confidant things will work with I do my migration!

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