can I restore files lost after a snapshot

[wnewell]

I'm very new to VM fusion and working within a windows XP environment, I accidentally pushed the revert to snapshot button and it seems I've lost all data and emails for over three months. Is there a way to restore those files?

[IamTHEvilONE]

I don't think so. Even if you could recover the snapshot files, if the parent virtual hard drive becomes modified the snapshots become invalid.

Unfortunately, there probably isn't much good news.

EvilOne

1 - Check the documents

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and remember ... I like points

[admin]

No, they're gone. If you're lucky and haven't touched the disk much, you might be able to undelete the snapshot .vmdk file (using third-party recovery tools) and recover files from it, but I don't recall hearing of anyone who's been able to do this.

When you restore to a snapshot, Fusion shows a warning along the lines of "By restoring this snapshot, you will lose all changes made to the virtual machine since the snapshot was taken. This may include newly installed programs and data. This action cannot be undone. Do you want to restore this virtual machine to its exact state on MMM DD, YYY hh:mm:ss?", with the default being "No". Is there a way we could improve this message?

[wnewell]

I don't recall seeing the message quite like that. Windows locked up and I was frustrated. Again this is all new to me. Hard lesson learned. thanks

what third party software could I try to restore these files?

[IamTHEvilONE]

something like this should work: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

or google around for alternates ... I don't know of anything free. http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=2544

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/84860 - this may help sync up the Disk and SnapShot

My only concern is if the parent disk has been modified too much. I have seen some people do similar things with Workstation (undelete a snapshot and boot with a modified parent disk), and then the entire VM becomes corrupt and becomes junk. So just make sure to backup the entire vm (snaps and all) before fiddling with it.

EvilOne

1 - Check the documents

2 - Search the forums

3 - Post Question

and remember ... I like points

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

I've lost all data and emails for over three months.

As you already said in another reply "Hard lesson learned" so you may want to take take this unfortunate opportunity to implement a backup scheme that involves backing up User Data, on a regular basis, from within the Virtual Machine to external media such as CD/DVD or Removable Hard Drive although my preference for long term storage is Optical Media and I just use external hard drives for short term use. FWIW I treat a Virtual Machine no different than a Physical Machine when it comes to backing up User Data and do it in the Virtual Machine the same way. This insures that I can maintain hierarchical folder structures and date and time stamp information and other meta-data associated with the files all of which which may not be important for some however one has to define their own needs. One can also backup the Virtual Machine Package to insure ones User Data is backed up however this requires lots of space and is not as practical a just backing up User Data by itself.

For future reference when something like this or any scenario where you accidentally delete something the best case scenario for recovery is going to occur if you immediately and properly shutdown the system and then boot with the appropriate recovery disc providing the opportunity to attempt recovery of the deleted file and then in the case of a Virtual Machine it may be possible to manually repair the CID's involved with the virtual hard drive segments. I have not had the need to do this on a Mac yet however I've done in on a Windows Host using VMware Workstation so the concept can and does work if all the pieces come together properly.

[wnewell]

thanks, lesson learned!

[WillemB]

Just another note.

I dont like snapshotting production VM's. Snapshots should imo never be used as a method of backup. Snapshots should only be used for short term activities as in testing. The revert button is another good reason not to snapshot production machines since you cannot undo this. Snapshotting is just too easy and can quickly and unnoticed lead to full filesystems and you don't want to go there .... trust me :-). I've had to purge 15 snapshots last month due to people not cleaning up after themselves, this resulted into fillesystem full abort, retry hell.

When you need a to go back in time use a proper backup scheme as proposed by the previous poster.

Or for the poor-people: bring down machine make a clone of the machine and call is Backup_<VMNAME>. Bring up machine. It will always be visible in VC, the VM will be consistent. Just make sure you don't start it up.

[admin]

Or for the poor-people: bring down machine make a clone of the machine and call is Backup_<VMNAME>. Bring up machine. It will always be visible in VC, the VM will be consistent. Just make sure you don't start it up.

The comment about VC isn't applicable (this is the Fusion forum), but the rest still applies (and I concur that snapshot != backup).

[IamTHEvilONE]

snapshot != backup

can we get this in any of the VMworld Presentations?

EvilOne

[WillemB]

Fair comment I'm not into Fusion and assumed you could clone in it.