Why am I unable to open a .vmdk file In Fusion 10.1.6? It is greIyed out in Finder. Please help.

[frenchlang]

I am unable to open a .vmdk file In Fusion 10.1.6. I think I deleted the specific .vmdk file and have tried to open my virtual machine with another .vmdk file, but it is greyed out in Finder. Please help.

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

as a first step, please run ls -l in the VM's folder to list all files, and post the output.

André

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Please answer the question to André, but to add a bit of background information.

A vmdk file is a virtual machine disk file. You cannot directly open that with VMware Fusion, you'll need a .vmx file.

The .vmx file has the virtual machine configuration and that file has settings that point to a vmdk file.

IOW, you need more than just a .vmdk file in order to run a VM.

hope this helps,

--

Wil

[frenchlang]

Thank you André and Wil.

My issue was solved by VMWare tech support. I had deleted some .vmdk files, which we retrieved using Time Machine. Then with all the .vmdk files and the .vmx file I was able to open and run the VM.

I appreciate all the help.

Judy

[Mikero]

For future reference, we STRONGLY recommend excluding your VM folder from Time Machine backups.

They tend to be unreliable due to how TM backs up things incrementally (i.e. you could have 1 disk spread across years of backups taken at different points in time).

I know a lot of users enjoy Vimalin which is designed specifically to backup Fusion and Workstation virtual machines.

[425PM]

I have all .vmdk files along with .vmx file. They are exactly same location and takes up 560GB space on my SSD yet Fusion is telling me that it can open it because it is unable to find the file specified. Please help.

[Mikero]

Please don't hijack other folks' threads 😉

You have started a different one, discussion can continue there.