The file specified is not a virtual disk

[Keyagoho]

Hello

Today I wanted to turn on the virtual machine and I got an error

"The file specified is not a virtual disk"

I turned off the virtual machine correctly, there were no glitches or blackouts

I tried using the command "vmware-vdiskmanager -R path\to\*.vmdk", it didn’t help

I put all the information that is

(Sorry for my bad english)

VMware Workstation 15 Pro version 15.1.0 build-13591040

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

what is drive X:? Is it e.g. an external USB drive? If yes, can you confirm that it has not been removed without first detaching it?

Anyway, to start with, please run dir *.* /one > filelist.txt in the VM's folder, then compress/zip filelist.txt along with any existing vmware*.log files, and attach the .zip archive to a reply post.

André

[Keyagoho]

X: is external hhd drive, I have been using it for a long time and so far there have been no problems

First, I turn off the virtual machine, computer, and only then unmount the hard drive

I know how hard drive are sensitive, especially external har drives

[a_p_]

That doesn't look so good. Some of the files have wrong content (binary data instead of text), and at least one (manjaro-s014.vmdk is zero bytes) lost all data, so that it looks like the disk may have logical errors (hopefully no physical errors).

What I'd suggest, is that you copy/backup all important data that's on this USB disk to another device, and then run chkdsk x: /f to check for, and fix possible issues.

After that's done, we need to extract some of the metadata from the existing ...-s00X.vmdk files, to find out whether we can recreate the corrupt "manjaro.vmdk".

To do this, please download dsfok.zip from http://faq.sanbarrow.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=47&id=111&artlang=en, extract the executables to the VM's folder, run the below mentioned command in the VM's folder, then compress/zip all the "xxx-....bin" files and attach the .zip archive to a reply post

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

Quick question: When did you last backup the VM?

André

[Keyagoho]

ok, will try now

unfortunately I did not backup

[continuum]

Do you store this VM in a directory that syncs to OneDrive ?
If yes - avoid this in future !
If no - just ignore the question.

[Keyagoho]

chkdsk says that everything is fine

Thank you for reply and help

[Keyagoho]

up

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure whether there's more damage in the files than what's obvious, so here are the steps I recommend:

1. close VMware Workstation
2. backup the VM's folder/files
3. replace "manjaro.vmdk" with the recreated one that I've attached
4. create a temporary VM with the exact same virtual disk size (120GB)
5. replace "manjaro-s014.vmdk" with the temporary VM's "...-s014.vmdk" file (renamed to "manjaro-s014.vmdk")
6. delete the temporary VM
7. take a snapshot
8. power on the VM
9. backup important guest OS files
10. run a file system check within the guest OS

There's of course data loss, or corruption in this case due to the missing data in "manjaro-s014.vmdk".

If any errors show up while powering on the VM (e.g. file cannot be repaired, ..), then please attach the VM's new vmware.log to a reply post.

André

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[Keyagoho]

Thanks a lot, that works!!!

System seems broken, I can assume that this is because of the playonlinux

Because all works fine except home directory error