Parent File Missing

[luke6728]

I am a uni student and i copied a VM from the university computers to take home. When i got home and opened the VM it said the parent file was missing. After looking in the .vmdk file i realised the parentFileNameHint was using the old university path however the files in this path (parent disk in 'master' folder) is never copied or changed when we work on the VM's in uni. So i was wondering if there was a way to recover the VM without access to the 'master' folder.

Thanks

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

if I understand this correctly, then you do have a snapshot, but are missing that parent .vmdk files!?

Snapshots in VMware environments work as chains, where each chain link is necessary. A snapshot contains only deltas (modified data blocks), and cannot be used without its parents.

André

[luke6728]

Hi André,

Thank you for your reply. I'm pretty sure that I am missing the parent file and that there's not much that can be done. The only bit I don't understand is that in university we copy the main VM folder from the server to the pc and then work on it from the pc and then just copy it back over to the server. So the file that is listed in the .vmdk under 'parentFileNameHint' is never accessed, changed or copied. I have attached a photo with the list of all the files that we copy to work on in university. These are also the only files I have at home. If you could confirm that I am in fact missing something that would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Luke

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

The screenshot shows linked clone files (basically a snapshot).

You mentioned the "parentFileNameHint" that you found in "Windows 7 x64-cl1.vmdk". In order to make your VM work, you need access to that parent.

Please take a look at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1015180#disk_chain​ which explains how snapshots work.

André