How Do I Find a Folder that has Vanished from a Datastore?

[DadTo2]

All, I am going to preface this up front with I'm not a network person at all, now am I familiar with Veeam/VMWare.  Not technically illiterate, just a developer, not a network person.

My problem is that we've had an entire folder disappear from a datastore when the VM was running.  Right now the VM's information looks like this:

When I go to that datastore, there is no folder there.  I recreated it, hoping it would put the files in there (Been a really long day!) but no files of course.  And unfortunately this one server is mission critical and did not have any backups taken of it, which makes it worse.

So, again apologies for the newbie questions, but is there a way to fix this or find the files and move them to the folder?

Thanks.

[Gidrakos]

1) Do you have a backup of the files that live in that datastore? If so, you can simply power down tthe VM, right-click and "Remove From Inventory", copy the backups into the appropriate location, then find the VMX file on the datastore, right-click and "Import" and it will bring the VM back to life in the state it was in during the backups.

2) Have you searched the parent folders for if this file was mistakenly moved?

3) Do you guys have Automated DRS enabled (vmware can vMotion a machine if it deems it necessary to balance the load), and could it have been in the middle of a migration to another datastore when something occurred?

[a_p_]

I think that the only one here on VMTN who might be able to help is continuum​.

You can find contact details in his profile (using Skype is the preferred way).

André

[homerzzz]

I had the same thing happen with ESXi 6.7 running on HP hardware and using the qfle3 module. Any chance you are running on HP?