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keyboard_samura
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Windows XP .vmdk file cannot be copied without fatal error occurring

Hi, this problem has been dogging me for a while.

Doing simple back up of the vmware folder to a backup hard drive and the every time it gets to

the file "Windows XP Home Edition.vmdk" file I get an error about 90% of the way through coping it saying that some data

could not be read or written (Error code -36). I don't know what that means or how to proceed as the read/write permissions

are on for me, group, and world.

The Finder cannot complete the ogeration because some data in "Windows XP Home Edition.vmdk" could not be read or written.

(Error code -36).

If I try to create an archive, it gets through most of it but bails with an error "An error occurred while archiving file."

so at the moment I have no way of backing up this critical file.

Running VMware Fusion 2.04 on MacOS 10.4.11 using Windows XP HE.

I can boot up

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wila
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Hi,

From the looks of it this is not good news.

I take it that you do shut down Fusion before trying to copy your VM?

Here's a report:

http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/771099/site_id/1

and another one:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1969888&tstart=0

Both tell basically the same story.. your file (aka your virtual disk) is corrupt.

Now the good news is that it doesn't appear to have happened on a critical part of your virtual machine.

So go get a disk imaging tool that you can use from within windows and make a clone of it as quickly as you can.

Or alternatively install converter into the VM and clone the machine that way.

Good luck!



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

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wila
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Hi,

From the looks of it this is not good news.

I take it that you do shut down Fusion before trying to copy your VM?

Here's a report:

http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/771099/site_id/1

and another one:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1969888&tstart=0

Both tell basically the same story.. your file (aka your virtual disk) is corrupt.

Now the good news is that it doesn't appear to have happened on a critical part of your virtual machine.

So go get a disk imaging tool that you can use from within windows and make a clone of it as quickly as you can.

Or alternatively install converter into the VM and clone the machine that way.

Good luck!



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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keyboard_samura
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I take it that you do shut down Fusion before trying to copy your VM?

Yes, of course Fusion is completely closed and shut down. In my mac has been shut down and rebooted several times since the last time I ran Fusion.

Thanks I will look at those reports. I was afraid of that.

I am not sure exactly of what you say about fixing it in Windows but I will look into that.

thanks.

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keyboard_samura
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and another one:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1969888&tstart=0

Both tell basically the same story.. your file (aka your virtual disk) is corrupt.

That link appears to describe my problem exactly.

Now the good news is that it doesn't appear to have happened on a critical part of your virtual machine.

So go get a disk imaging tool that you can use from within windows and make a clone of it as quickly as you can.

Or alternatively install converter into the VM and clone the machine that way.

I have no clue what is a good disk imaging tool on Windows, any suggestions out there.

converter you are talking about is this one ?

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

I hoping that will write to a disk outside the XP environment otherwise I am stuck.

thanks for your help.

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wila
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Yes that's the product i was talking about. Stupid marketing department name changes.. grr... it used to be called just vmware converter.

What you can do is write out to the host via either a windows share or a host file share. So effectively exporting the virtual machine to another location.

If you have access to it then you could try the standalone converter first, just boot from the converter and follow the steps.. if that doesn't work (eg. if you can't get a share working that way) then install converter within your VM.

I would be extremely careful and test your endresult before destroying your old VM. It is probably a good idea to take a snapshot before installing converter within the VM.

Just so that you can roll back if you get into more problems with the disk.



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Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
keyboard_samura
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What you can do is write out to the host via either a windows share or a host file share. So effectively exporting the virtual machine to another location.

If you have access to it then you could try the standalone converter first, just boot from the converter and follow the steps.. if that doesn't work (eg. if you can't get >a share working that way) then install converter within your VM.

I had installed the converter within my VM before I read this. It installed fine. I not sure how I would "boot from the converter" in OS X since it seems to run only in Linux or Windows. That's what they mean by "standalone"? I actually had to install a piece of new software last week in Atlanta that involved Windows sqlexpress installation as well and it all worked fine, believe it or not. Though lately things (even before that installation) have seemed a bit sluggish), though Chrome is fast and even IE8 (which I also installed a few weeks ago is decent). This problem of not being able to copy the vmdk file has been dogging me for months actually.

so I installed the converter successfully, started a conversion of the powered on local machine successfully to a shared folder location with enough space.

It got 92% done and then an error popped up. "Operation on file failed." ( see attached images. ) It had already written 4 2 GB blocks successfully and was on the what seems was the last one when this happened. I was almost done. Guess I going to have to find a decent equivalent of DiskWarrior and hope it can fix this. If not I guess I am going to have to start completely over and spend days installing a lot of software. Unfortunately, means that new employee software I installed in Atlanta that is tied to this installation won't work and will have to go through hoops to get the licensing transferred. What a hassle.

I would be extremely careful and test your endresult before destroying your old VM. It is probably a good idea to take a snapshot before installing converter within the VM.

Just so that you can roll back if you get into more problems with the disk.

thanks. didn't do that but I guess I should try a snap shot now.

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wila
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I was about to suggest to look at other windows software that was able to ignore the error, until i saw your last screenshot.

Again it is the OS X part that is complaining while you are reading in the VM. I guess that makes sense, I'll think a bit about it, maybe there are other ways on getting around it.

If only OS X would not complain, sometimes it is not too bad to miss a few bits and bytes, it you can get the rest out of it.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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WoodyZ
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wila wrote: I was about to suggest to look at other windows software that was able to ignore the error, until i saw your last screenshot. Again it is the OS X part that is complaining while you are reading in the VM. I guess that makes sense, I'll think a bit about it, maybe there are other ways on getting around it.

I haven't followed this thread to close and only skimmed the links however correct me if I'm wrong, I get the impression that everyone thinks that the file is damaged and that's why the copy is failing. Now I won't disagree with the file being damaged however the root cause of the damage is more likely to be a bad sector on the physical hard drives platter and not the content of the file itself. I get the impression that everyone thinks it's the content of the file that is causing the error and if that is the case I have to disagree with that assessment. At least more time then not when I've seen that error is was a defective physical hard drive.

If only OS X would not complain, sometimes it is not too bad to miss a few bits and bytes, it you can get the rest out of it.

The best test for this is to copy the file with dd first without conv=noerror, notrunc and see if it fails and then with the conv=noerror, notrunc and this would allow dd to continue to read/write the if/of.

Syntax Example: dd conv=noerror,notrunc if=SOURCE_PATHNAME of=DESTINATION_PATHNAME

Mac OS X Man Pages for dd

wila
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Yeah i expect it to just be a bad sector too.

dd in OS X .. do'h of course.. i was looking at dd for windows, but that doesn't help with an error on OS X.

Thanks Woody!

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Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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keyboard_samura
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I was copying over some files to the shared folder that I didn't want to lose and found one 250 Mb windows media file could not be copied, it froze up early in the copy process either by drag and drop or by copying to the shared folder forcing abort and reboots.

I attached the results of chkdsk which says it discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap and that Windows found problems with the file system. Restart with chkdsk/f didn't seem to solve it.

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keyboard_samura
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calling me crazy but after doing chkdsk/f

i succumbed to WinXP's nagging about updates and encountered the errors after successfully making 2 of the 13 updates that forced me to abort.

I had previously to that uninstalled several programs successfully and taken several snapshots as I attempted to assess what I would need to do if I completely removed the file and had to start from scratch.

I think I forgot to mention in the previous post that while I could not copy the wmv file I could succesfully delete it and empty the trash.

My vmware folder is on a separate partition from my OS X boot partition.

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wila
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It might very well be that the WMV file is the file who had the error/bad sector.

What you are doing now is not what you should be doing.

Don't mess around more with the broken VM, make the copy with dd as suggested by before your VM completely fails.



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Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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keyboard_samura
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I appreciate all the help.

on dd

before that I unmounted drives and did verify the disks and repair permissions etc.

dd without conv=noerror,notrunc produces an error after copying 6.95 Gb of the 7.54 Gb file

(see dd.png attached)

so did it with conv and saw a series of io errors but it completed.

so what happens if I try to startup with this, is that bad idea ?

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keyboard_samura
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ok, couldn't wait.

I moved the old file to another folder on the same disk and copied the version that had been created with dd conv

to the vmware on my internal drive. It copied without error. I started up Fusion and XP came up fine. restarted with chkdsk/f because it was claiming some problem. Says correcting errors in Volume Bitmap, Windows found problem with the file system.

don't know that is all about.

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WoodyZ
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I appreciate all the help.

>

on dd

before that I unmounted drives and did verify the disks and repair permissions etc.

JSYK "verify the disks and repair permissions etc" using Disk Utility does not examine the entire disk, sector for sector, at the block level which means whether or not it finds any issues and or corrects them that doesn't mean the disk is error free at the block level and you need to run a utility typically from the hard drive manufacture or one that is capable of scanning at the lowest level to verify there are no bad sectors on any of the platters in the physical hard drive.

dd without conv=noerror,notrunc produces an error after copying 6.95 Gb of the 7.54 Gb file

(see dd.png attached)

If dd fails to copy then this is indicative of bad sectors or physical damage on the platter. Note: You have been attaching images and JSYK the text in most message boxes as well as Terminal can just be copied and pasted thus no need to attach images and waste bandwidth.

so did it with conv and saw a series of io errors but it completed.

so what happens if I try to startup with this, is that bad idea ?

No it's not a bad idea and that's the whole point of using dd with the conv=noerror,notrunc so as to continue copying and pad the file so it's the same length because in some cases certain files are expected to be a given length and a truncated file could be problematic in some cases.

==========

Anyway without a low level test other then dd I can't say 100% but all pointers so far indicate that there are physical defects in the platter(s) in the physical hard drive and even though you can/have copied the file you still need to deal with a possibly/probably defective physical hard drive.

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keyboard_samura
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Anyway without a low level test other then dd I can say 100% but all pointers so far indicate that there are physical defects in the platter(s) in the physical >hard drive and even though you can/have copied the file you still need to deal with a possibly/probably defective physical hard drive.

something like DiskWarrior ?

I have never seen disk manufacturers support OS X .

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WoodyZ
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something like DiskWarrior ?

I haven't used DiskWarrior, just haven't had the need because of the other tools I have however when dd fails to copy a disk at any point it is indicative of bad sector(s) and dd was used in the past long before there were all these fancy tools so I'm already convinced however you need to dd the entire drive from a Live OS CD/DVD when the disk isn't mounted and not just have a failure on a single file as in this case. That way dd isn't reading the filesystem but just sector by sector regardless of the format or filesystem or OS and if it fails to read in that manner at that level then it's bad. I like using Knoppix 5.1.1 for things like this because it's free and it works and it has lots of other good uses as well although you could boot with the Leopard Install DVD and run Terminal from there.

I have never seen disk manufacturers support OS X .

I have used HDD Manufacturer specific utilities on my Mac's from Live Windows OS CD/DVD's but your right I haven't seen any that are specifically designed to boot a Mac and test just the HDD from the HDD Manufacturers and that is why I use a Windows Live CD/DVD with these utilities or just use Knoppix 5.1.1.

=========

I would download the KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso image and burn it to cd and then boot the Mac with it and then from a Root Shell (on the Penguin menu) use the following commands as an example.

fdisk -t -u /dev/sda
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=512

Note: sda in this case is the entire disk not just a partition like sda1 or sda2 would be. If the system has more then one physical hard drive like in a Mac Pro then you need to make sure you dd the right disk.

If that command completes without errors then the sector count from the fdisk command will match the records in/records out count and that would signify that the disk is error free as far as the surface of the platters are concerned. Note: This can take quite a while (hours) to complete depending on the size of the HDD.

Message was edited by: WoodyZ - Changed "bs-512" to "bs=512" and additional edits.

Message was edited by: WoodyZ - Added additional information using fdisk to get a sector count to compare records in/records out count of dd to ensure it reads the whole disk. Also note that the arguments use with fdisk in Knoppix do not match fdisk in OS X so do not use the fdisk -t -u in this example under OS X. In OS X fdisk /dev/disk0 by itself will report the total sectors.

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