Hello im a newbie to esxi. I think my ESXi vm, HMS.vmdk (1kb) got corrupted so I copied it along with HMS-flat.vmdk (1.8tb) to my windows PC using veeam in order to attempt to extract and recover the files
I tried using powerISO, VMDK Forensic Artifact Extractor, tried putting the vmdk file on Workstation 10. All of it gave me error about invalid disk type or not a valid vm image, something along those lines.
HMS.vmdk:
# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 encoding="UTF-8" CID=fffffffe parentCID=ffffffff isNativeSnapshot="no" createType="vmfs" # Extent description RW 3907033088 VMFS "HMS-flat.vmdk" # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic" ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "243201" ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255" ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "243201" ddb.geometry.heads = "255" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.longContentID = "37c3bb2c05cd493bd624cfd07ddc5da5" ddb.thinProvisioned = "1" ddb.toolsVersion = "9409" ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 93 f1 8c ca 02-52 c6 92 14 6f a3 86 b9"
The descriptor file looks fine. The descriptor file can be recreated, you can delete the old/corrupted one and recreate using the steps mentioned in the below KB
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002511
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=fffffffe
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="monolithicFlat"
# Extent description
RW 3907033088 FLAT "HMS-flat.vmdk" 0
# The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "243201"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
this edited version should be Workstation compatible - although the one you have should work as well