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peldone
Contributor
Contributor

Can I boot Fusion with a missing VMDK

I have a read error on one of the VMDK files. I am trying to backup my virtual machine. It was running but had errors occasionally before the whole Mac computer stopped booting up. If I copy all the files that will copy but am missing one of the VMDK files will the VM still boot up? I am trying to backup all the files that make up the VM and then format the computer and then open the VM to copy my important files out of the VM and then create a new VM then copy the files into the new VM. Or is there an easier way to do this? Can I just mount a virtual hard drive of the VM and copy the files from it as if it was an external hard drive?

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Post needs moving to the Fusion area, reported to the moderators.

 


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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

So first, Fusion dropped the vmdk mounter a while back, so that's not an option AFAIK.

Your best bet is to copy the file over even with errors.  That's the most likely to keep your information intact.  In terms of booting up, it'll depend on where it's corrupt.  One of the guru's here like Andre might have better information.

More broadly, if you have that kind of disk corruption, it indicates that you may be having a physical failure.  Simply formatting the machine and reinstalling won't solve that - you probably need a new drive.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

I agree with @ColoradoMarmot . Copy over what's possible, and - if you experience issues with the copied files - post a listing of the VM's files that you have, i.e. the output of ls -l (as plain text please, not as a screenshot). With that we can then see what might be possible.

André

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peldone
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the help! Here is what copied over using Carbon Copy Cloner. It is worse than I thought. There is a message when I try to post this text that the post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. I don't know what has been changed since it looks the same to me. Hopefully it won't confuse things.

-Brian

Windows 7 x64.vmwarevm % ls -l

total 425465344

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   3175088128 Feb  1  2018 564deb7b-c122-a896-80cb-3a01ffdf11b1.vmem

drwxr-xr-x  3 502    staff           96 Dec 23  2016 Applications

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4220452864 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4249419776 Dec  9 02:15 Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252041216 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s003.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4251713536 Dec  9 02:14 Virtual Disk-s004.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252499968 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s005.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4248043520 Nov 28 09:23 Virtual Disk-s006.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4244242432 Aug  6 17:31 Virtual Disk-s007.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4250796032 Dec  9 02:09 Virtual Disk-s008.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252303360 Dec  9 02:09 Virtual Disk-s009.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252499968 Dec  9 02:13 Virtual Disk-s010.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252499968 Dec  9 02:23 Virtual Disk-s011.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252368896 Dec  9 00:12 Virtual Disk-s012.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4250796032 Dec  9 02:10 Virtual Disk-s013.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252499968 Dec  9 01:52 Virtual Disk-s014.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4252499968 Dec  9 01:40 Virtual Disk-s015.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff    645005312 Sep 14 03:22 Virtual Disk-s016.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4261871616 Dec  9 02:10 Virtual Disk-s017.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4261937152 Dec  7 16:02 Virtual Disk-s018.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4261937152 Dec  7 16:02 Virtual Disk-s019.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4261937152 Dec  7 16:02 Virtual Disk-s020.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   4261937152 Aug 31 02:51 Virtual Disk-s021.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff    167837696 Aug 10 05:09 Virtual Disk-s022.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 02:09 Virtual Disk-s023.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 02:15 Virtual Disk-s024.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 00:33 Virtual Disk-s025.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Oct 26 01:29 Virtual Disk-s026.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 00:07 Virtual Disk-s027.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369298944 Dec  9 02:08 Virtual Disk-s028.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Nov 28 09:14 Virtual Disk-s029.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369364480 Nov 23 03:14 Virtual Disk-s030.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s032.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 01:50 Virtual Disk-s033.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  9 02:15 Virtual Disk-s035.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff   5369430016 Dec  4 01:54 Virtual Disk-s036.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10737876992 Dec  9 02:11 Virtual Disk-s040.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10737942528 Dec  9 02:10 Virtual Disk-s041.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10738794496 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s047.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10738794496 Dec  9 01:52 Virtual Disk-s048.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10646454272 Dec  9 02:16 Virtual Disk-s050.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff  10738794496 Dec  9 02:14 Virtual Disk-s052.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s055.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s056.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s057.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s058.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s059.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1703936 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s060.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff       720896 Jul 24  2022 Virtual Disk-s061.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         3141 Dec  9 01:49 Virtual Disk.vmdk

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         8684 Dec  9 01:49 Windows 7 x64.nvram

-rw-r--r--  1 btodd  staff          871 Dec 29 10:43 Windows 7 x64.plist

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff           91 Jul 24  2022 Windows 7 x64.vmsd

-rwxr--r--  1 btodd  staff         5548 Dec 29 08:55 Windows 7 x64.vmx

drwxrwxrwx  3 btodd  staff           96 Dec 29 08:49 Windows 7 x64.vmx.lck

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         4266 Jul 24  2022 Windows 7 x64.vmxf

drwxr-xr-x  7 502    staff          224 Dec  4  2014 appListCache

drwxr-xr-x  3 502    staff           96 Jul  6  2022 caches

-rw-r-----  1 502    staff        95429 Dec  6 02:34 mksSandbox-0.log

-rw-r-----  1 502    staff        96197 Nov 16 00:09 mksSandbox-1.log

-rw-r-----  1 502    staff       164516 Oct 19 11:42 mksSandbox-2.log

-rw-r-----  1 502    staff        93717 Dec  9 01:21 mksSandbox.log

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff            0 May 24  2020 quicklook-cache.png

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff       918385 Dec  8 21:55 startMenu.plist

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         8192 Oct 19 11:40 vm-73.scoreboard

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         8192 Oct 19 11:43 vm-74.scoreboard

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         8192 Nov 22 00:01 vm-75.scoreboard

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff         8192 Dec  8 21:55 vm.scoreboard

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      7746597 Mar  8  2018 vmmcores-17.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      6544873 May 22  2018 vmmcores-18.gz

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      5092420 Dec  8 21:06 vmware-0.log

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff      1679071 Nov 21 03:58 vmware-1.log

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff       261975 Oct 19 11:42 vmware-2.log

-rw-r--r--  1 502    staff       674793 Dec  9 02:28 vmware.log

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Not sure why your reply has been moved to the quarantine.
Anyway, to find out what's needed to replace the missing files so that the virtual disk can be opened again, please compress/zip "Virtual Disk.vmdk", and attach the .zip archive to your next reply.

André

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peldone
Contributor
Contributor

Weird thing happened. After a month of working on getting the files off. I had a power outage when the computer was in target disk mode and the computer rebooted normally. I was able to launch Windows and copy my files out. It lasted 2 days and then wouldn't boot up again. Thanks for the help.

-Brian

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