The File Specified is Not a Virtual Disk

[swellington]

So I had to do a restore of my virtual disk after I accidentally deleted the .vmdk files.

When I went to start it back up, I got the "The File Specified is Not a Virtual Disk" error.

I've attached the list of files in my virtual disk directory, along with the latest vmware.log and vmdk file.

Thank you for any help! Please let me know if you need more information or for me to attach other files.

-Scott

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

I think this may have to do with the VM's suspended state. What you may try is to delete the .vmem, and .vmss file to see whether this solves the issue.

If this doesn't help, download dsfok.zip from http://faq.sanbarrow.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=47&id=111&artlang=en, extract the executables, run the below command in the VM's folder, then compress/zip all the "xxx-....bin" files and attach them to a reply post.

for %i in (*.vmdk) do @dsfo.exe "%i" 0 1536 "xxx-%~ni.bin"

The command will extract only metadata (i.e. no user data) from the .vmdk files.

André

[swellington]

Thank you, Andre. Unfortunately, deleting the .vmem and .vmss didn't help. I've attached the zipped xxx-..bin file as requested.

Thanks again!

-Scott

[a_p_]

I'm afraid that there's not much that I can do for you, because most of these files start with binary zeroes instead of the expected/required metadata (Starting with "KDMV" followed by some binary information).

Did you recover the files from a backup, or from the disk on which they were deleted?

In case of a backup, please check whether the backed up *-s###.vmdk files start with "KDMV".

André

[swellington]

I appreciate the effort, Andrew.

They were restored from the disk where they were deleted.

Thanks,

-Scott

[a_p_]

Although I think that there's too much corruption in the restored files, I could take a closer look at the files' metadata.

If you want me to do this, you'll have to extract that data from the *-s###.vmdk files.

for %i in (*-s???.vmdk) do @dsfo.exe "%i" 0 327680 "xxx-%~ni.bin"

for %i in (*-s021.vmdk) do @dsfo.exe "%i" 0 65536 "xxx-%~ni.bin"

André

[swellington]

Sure. Thank you.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

It looks like the recovery tool couldn't restore the data, and replaced unrecoverable parts with binary zeroes.

Only 3 out of the 21 files contain a valid header, but the metadata (grain tables) within these three files is corrupted.

Sorry, but in this case I can't help.

André

[swellington]

Thank you for your efforts, Andre!

Very much appreciated.

Take care!

-Scott