\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64.vmwarevm\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006.vmdk

[waleeedm53]

Hello all, 

this is my first post in this community and I hope to find an answer to my issue,
the issue is vmware workstation 16.2.4 build-20089737, says Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006.vmdk, 
and when I browse the files to choose it, it again says,

{ VMware Workstation cannot find the virtual disk "H:\Test-vm\kali-linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64.vmwarevm\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.

The system cannot find the file specified

Cannot open the disk 'H:\Test-vm\kali-linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64.vmwarevm\Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine.}

anyone could help please?

moreover, I can't return my previous snapshot, I don't know why? don't know that happened? need a solution please to save my data there

thanks in advance

[a_p_]

By default, virtual disks, and snapshots consist of several files, a descriptor file (e.g. <disk-name>.vmdk) and multiple data files (e.g. <disk-name>-s0xx.vmdk). It seems that one (or more) of the data files are missing). Please verify that all of the data files that are listed in the descriptor file are present. Hint: In some cases, users found such missing files in the A/V's quarantine.

If you cannot find the missing files, provide the following information to find out what can be done.
Get a complete list of the VM's files (Command: dir *.* /one > filelist.txt), then compress/zip filelist.txt, the .vmx file, the .vmsd file, all the small .vmdk descriptor files, and finally attach the .zip archive to your next reply.

André

[waleeedm53]

first of all thanks for your prompt reply,

please, could you confirm what {all the small .vmdk} exactly is? cause as I see I have many of these files in the current path, and I think a lot of them are related to old snapshots, so which file should I deliver? only .vmdk files related to 000006? or all files with .vmdk?
also, there are a very huge files exceeded 7GB or more, must zip it or what?

thanks

[a_p_]

By default the .vmdk files are split into multiple "-s0xx.vmdk" files, each with an associated descriptor file without "-s0xx" in its name. The descriptor files are small text files with only 1 - 2kB in size. However, if you opted to create monolithic .vmdk files, each virtual disk, and each snapshot consist of a single, large .vmdk file. That's of course not what you want to post, because it contains user data!

In case of a monolithic file format, omit the .vmdk files in the .zip archive, and I will provide a small Powershell script to extract the metadata if needed.

André

[waleeedm53]

Many thanks for your clarification, here you are the files you want.
please let me know if you want anything elase, 

thank you!

[a_p_]

According to the file listing, two of the 21 files which make up the latest snapshot are missing.
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s003.vmdk, and Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s004.vmdk

Unless you can restore/find them (e.g. quarantined by your A/V app), I see two possible options.

Common for both option is to replace the missing files, by copies of other files to technically fix the vitrual disks:
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s003.vmdk with a copy of Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000005-s003.vmdk
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s004.vmdk with a copy of Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000005-s004.vmdk

1. Open the Snapshot Manager and revert to the previous snapshot from May, 20 (if you don't care about the latest changes)
2. Take a new snapshot, and try staring the VM to find out about whether you can live with the damage. If it's too much, you may backup important guest files, then revert ("Go To") to the snapshot from May, 20 and restore the backed up files.

André

Note: The 2 attached .zip files contain personal data, so that you may consider to remove these 2 attachments from your reply!

[waleeedm53]

Spoiler

Many thanks for your support,

could you please, explain how can I take a backup of my files in guest mode?

By the way, in the current state, I can't take new snapshot, this is the error message:

{An error occurred while taking a snapshot: The system cannot find the file specified.}

[waleeedm53]

note please, I did

Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s003.vmdk with a copy of 
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000005-s003.vmdk
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000006-s004.vmdk with a copy of 
Kali-Linux-2021.2-vmware-amd64-000005-s004.vmdk

but, when I chose to revert to may, 20 snapshots, I get another error as follow:
{An error occurred while reverting to a snapshot: The file specified is not a virtual disk.}

any help please?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Sorry, but I somehow missed that some of the .vmdk files have a zero bytes size, i.e. they do not event contain metadata.

What you can do is to replace the 0 Byte files with the ones of the preceding snapshot, e.g. "...-000005-s001.vmdk" with "...-000004-s001.vmdk" etc.

With all the missing data, I'm afraid that there's not much guest data that you can backup, and it may be best to revert to the last healthy looking snapshot from May, 16.

With backup, I'm thinking of powering on the VM from the additional snapshot, and copying required files to e.g. a network drive. If you don't have one, you could as well add a temporary virtual disk to the VM, and copy the data to this disk.
Please backup that addition virtual disk after backing up the guest OS files, and before reverting to a previous snapshot.

André

[waleeedm53]

Many thanks!
I appreciate your efforts