retrieve files from a snapshot that does not have a disk it depends on

[nettech1]

is there a way to retrieve files from a snapshot that does not have a disk it depends on ?
if I try to connect the VMDK as a hard drive I get
Failed to start the virtual machine. Module DiskEarly power on failed. Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/532da363-b1f4f954-a311-000e0cbc42b5/WKS/wks-000002.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Failed to lock the file

[a_p_]

What you could try to do is to create a new virtual disk with the exact same provisioned size of the snapshot, partition and format it like the original (lost) virtual disk, and the chain the snapshot to the newly created virtual disk. Once done attach the snapshot .vmdk as an additional virtual disk to a helper VM and run e.g. a file rescue application.

I'd suggest you backup the snapshot files prior to start rescuing files!

André

[nettech1]

Provisioned size of the snapshot is 20G, it was formatted with NTFS (Windows XP)

Can you collaborate more on chaining and rescue application?

[nettech1]

I was able to do a RAW scan just on the DELTA file and identify NTFS partition. Once partition was identified I was able to extract the files I needed!