Missing virtual disk files

[fabwins]

Hi guys,
I have the following problem. After several restores via Time Machine, I have noticed that 2 numbers (7 and 11) are missing from the individual virtual hard disks. What can I do to recover my data? Specifically, I probably need 2 folders.
Thanks a lot!

Applications

appListCache

caches

mksSandbox-0.log

mksSandbox-1.log

mksSandbox-2.log

quicklook-cache.png

startMenu.plist

Virtuelle Festplatte-f001.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f002.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f003.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f004.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f005.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f006.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f008.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f009.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f010.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f012.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f013.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f014.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f015.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f016.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f017.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f018.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f019.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f020.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f021.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f022.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f023.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f024.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f025.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte-f026.vmdk

Virtuelle Festplatte.vmdk

vm-1.scoreboard

vm-2.scoreboard

vm.scoreboard

vmware-0.log

vmware-1.log

vmware-2.log

vmware.log

Windows 10 x64-568f4106.vmem

Windows 10 x64-568f4106.vmss

Windows 10 x64.nvram

Windows 10 x64.plist

Windows 10 x64.vmsd

Windows 10 x64.vmx

Windows 10 x64.vmx.lck

Windows 10 x64.vmxf

[Technogeezer]

Ouch - here is the bad news: you are in a situation where you may experience data loss.

First make a copy of this virtual machine from the Finder to somewhere (another folder or external disk) to preserve its current state. There are a few folks here that might be able to help you piece things together with what you have. But note that having missing pieces of virtual disks are like erasing sections of your hard drive. You might be able to boot your disk and chkdsk on it, but there is no guarantee that the VM will boot or that all of your files are there. Don't try to piece together a virtual disk by taking one backup and folding in the missing files unless you hear from those experts in this community.

You might want to see if there's a Time Machine backup that has all the virtual disk files. Make sure all of the files are there and recover them to a new virtual machine (including the other files in the VM bundle) from that backup. You might get lucky and get it to boot and successfully complete chkdsk. Even then, restoring them may not give you a good backup to recover from. 

You should immediately stop using Time Machine as a method of backing up your virtual disks. It is not a recommended method of backing them up - see chapter 7 of the Using VMware Fusion guide for Fusion 12 https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Fusion/12/fusion-12-user-guide.pdf.

Too many times we see that people can not recover virtual machines when using it, and it is terribly wasteful of backup media. Consider instead:

• Periodically making a copy of your virtual machine to another disk after shutting it down.
• Using a cloud service (example on Windows using OneDrive) to back up your files.
• Using a backup utility within the virtual machine to other media (such as external USB drive connected to the virtual machine).
• Use a utility such as @wila 's Vimalin (www.vimalin.com).

[fabwins]

I know my situation is very unpleasant. I looked through my TimeMachine backups, but unfortunately the VM had 100 GB, so TimeMachine only has the faulty file. So that's where I'm stuck!
Somehow, as a first step, I would have to repair Windows so that the OS starts again, or?

[wila]

Hi,

You'll need one of our data recovery specialists that frequent this forum and at this moment that would be @a_p_ 

If you cannot locate a copy of those two disk slices then the only thing you can do is to recreate the disk by creating a new VM with the exact same size and copying in empty slices. (Alternatively you might have empty slices in your disk, but as there are no file sizes in your file list, we don't know..)

Please note that the above will only work if you haven't resized your virtual disk after creating it !

With empty slices of the correct size, VMware Fusion at least won't complain and as the slices are not near the start, you probably will be able to boot.
However as @Technogeezer correctly mentions, you'll most likely have some gaps in your disk and thus data loss.

Note that you should have a backup before experimenting with a virtual machine so it is best to make a copy before the "can I fix it" test. In addition.. when you do copy in empty disk slices, make a snapshot before booting so that you have an easy recovery point.

Hope this helps and André please correct me if I said something stupid 😉
--
Wil

[a_p_]

I agree with @wila. Replacing the missing .vmdk files with copies of other existing ones, which have the same block size (block sizes are shown in Virtuelle Festplatte.vmdk) will at allow Fusion to recognize the virtual disk. Once replaced, I'd suggest that you create a snapshot, and then try to power on the VM, to find out whether the missing/required data is accessible.

I don't have a MAC, so I'm not sure whether there's an option to just mount the guest file system to the host, but that's something @wila knows.

André

[wila]

Hi André,

On macOS there's no option to directly mount the guest OS file system from the virtual disk at the host.
I think that the last time we had that option was with VMware Fusion 3.x, which is just a few versions ago ...

--
Wil