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dornm21
Contributor
Contributor

Recovery from a Lost (non-recoverable) delta vmdk file

I am looking for help with trying to restore/receover a VM with a corrupt (not recoverable) delta.vmdk file, the file was partially written over with other data.

No backups exist (a mistake during the attempt of a backup operation caused the corruption)

Background Info:

The VM has had snapshots taken in the past

The VM was shutdown normally to perform a cli manual backup operation on the file system. 

VM has 2 disks inside of it

Esxi host is Vsphere 5.5

VM guest OS is windows 2008R2

It appears the corrupted delta file belongs to the first disk (the OS)  FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

I understand I have lost some of the data from the disk "FILE-Primary.vmdk", I hope only from the time of the last snapshot being taken,  around the May 09 time frame. 

My hope is to be able to get the system restored with the FILE-Primary.vmdk having the data from the May 9th time frame and then the other disk "FILE-Primary_3.vmdk"  up to the time the system was shutdown July 8th.

As an accidental VM admin,  and the inability to get to Dell/VM support until probably tomorrow morning I am hoping to gain some insights from this forum.

Attachment contains the non-flat and non-delta files from the directory.

Thank you  in advance of any insights and support provided.

John D

Error message during start up

**************

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM FILE-Primary.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module DiskEarly power on failed.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/6ac399c6-b1733377/FILE-Primary/FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

One of the parameters supplied is invalid

**************

***************

List of files in directory

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-rw-------. 1 root root     384624640 Jul  8 18:27 FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           327 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root    8810139648 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary_3-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           333 Jun 15 13:39 FILE-Primary_3-000001.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root 1099511627776 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary_3-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           554 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary_3.vmdk

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root            73 Jun 14 10:29 FILE-Primary-4dae1ab3.hlog

-rw-------. 1 root root   42949672960 May  9 02:29 FILE-Primary-flat.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root          8684 Jul  8 11:54 FILE-Primary.nvram

-rw-------. 1 root root         29079 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary-Snapshot2.vmsn

-rw-------. 1 root root           550 May  9 01:58 FILE-Primary.vmdk

-rw-------. 1 root root           568 May  9 02:32 FILE-Primary.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root          3555 Jun 15 13:38 FILE-Primary.vmx

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root          4372 Jun 15 15:31 FILE-Primary.vmxf

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        396546 May  8 13:24 vmware-11.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        393369 May  9 02:30 vmware-12.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        281798 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-13.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        150976 Jun 14 10:29 vmware-14.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root        279941 Jul  8 11:54 vmware-15.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88918 Jul  9 04:19 vmware-16.log

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root         88835 Jul  9 04:36 vmware.log

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2 Replies
dekoshal
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Use below kb to verify if its a child-parent ID mismatch.

"The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created" error (1007969) | VMware KB

You can also verify if the CID mismatch status by running this command against the highest level snapshot .vmdk :

vmkfstools -e filename.vmdk

vmkfstools -q -v10 "your_disk.vmdk"

If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider the use of the Correct or Helpful to award points.

Best Regards,

Deepak Koshal

CNE|CLA|CWMA|VCP4|VCP5|CCAH

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

What you can do to make the VM work again (with the old FILE-primary.vmdk) is:

  • replace scsi0:0.fileName = "FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk" with scsi0:0.fileName = "FILE-Primary.vmdk" in the VM's configuration (.vmx) file
  • reload this specific VM (see https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026043 for details)

I'd suggest you create a temporary snapshot prior to powering on the VM to avoid possible data loss in case something doesn't work as expected.

Note that you will likely need to re-join the VM to the AD after "resetting" the system drive.

Once everything looks ok, consider to consolidate the snapshots, i.e. run "Delete All" from the snapshot manager, and delete the now obsolete FILE-Primary-000001.vmdk and FILE-Primary-000001-delta.vmdk files.

André

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