vmware user for years, first time using player and an image gets corrupted?

[rrich]

Hi Folks,

As the title suggests, i've used vmware server/esxi (and virtualbox) for years.  For some reason I installed player on a new laptop and within a week have somehow managed to corrupt a disk image to the extent that it doesn't seem recoverable.  Two (sets of) questions

- Is player in any way less robust in terms of maintaining disk image integrity than server?  This system (new windows 8 box) has shut itself down once or twice b/c i forgot to change the windows update settings, but aside from that the images do not undergo much disk activity such that it would have been 'busy' when it shut down.  There were several occasions where i *abused* my vmware server images (both running windows guests), constantly shutting down on running systems and never had an issue with the disk image file itself...not one time.  Of course the guest filesystem took a dookie every now and again, but no surprises there.

- How do disk images get corrupt to the point that they are unusable?  I know the snapshots add complexity, but isn't a 20gb preallocated disk basically just a big block bucket?  What would corrupt it to the point that vmware-dismanager can't successfully repair it?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Bob

[WoodyZ]

VMware Server runs the VM as a Service would properly shutdown a VM if running upon the Host being being rebooted/shutdown however VMware Player does not have that ability and you absolutely must suspend or properly shutdown the Guest OS before rebooting/shutdown the Host!  Otherwise you can very easily trash a virtual hard disk!

[continuum]

You get corruption on 20 gb preallocated vmdks ?
Thats interesting - can you post vmware.logs with the error messages ?

vmware-vdiskmanagers -R function to repair vmdks is broken.

Last vmdks that I could fix with vmware-vdiskmanager -R were from WS 7

If WS 9 or VMplayer 5 complain that a vmdk needs repair it can also be a false alarm and go away next time you try to start the VM.

[rrich]

Thanks folks, I understand that shutting it down while the VM's are up and running is essentially abusive behavior.  I'm not saying that's the norm, just that over the course of several years, there were a number of occasions where that did happen for one reason or another (and no graceful shut down..battery drops out kind of shutdowns) and i never encountered a corrupted vm disk image that VMWare complained about mounting.  (Guest OS, again, is another story)

I'll post the log when I can.  Unfortunately I've tried booting the VM a few times and it doesn't seem to have improved at all.

The disk is snapshotted, the suffix on the vmdk that's getting the error is .00004.  I'm assuming that's how it gets corrupted, that the snapshot doesn't know what image file to get a block from (?) because some table gets hammered.  It just seems unusual (to me) that you can't mount it at all.

I've kind of written this one off, so while i'd be happy to get input on how to get it working again, my main concern is whether or not I should continue with player.  I think i'm just going to install server to avoid the question, but it does make me curious.

Thanks

Bob