Besides being handy and great VMs are, they are quite volatile and tend to break or get corrupt files within the VMDK file. If the host machine restarts unexpectedly or the VM is not shutting down properly and etc. you may then experience issues the next time you try to restart.
Recover VMDK file from VMware with No Flaws
When VMware files are prone to corruption as any other data or database file would be there. In order to recover VMDK file of Virtual Machine from a corrupt state, it is necessary to perform either a manual processing on it or using a third party application.
How About a Basic VMDK File Repair?
In the case of inaccessibility or integrity issues with your VMDK file for the very first time then basic repair tips would probably help resolve the problem.
Here is how you can apply methods to repair corrupt VMDK:
Basically, a VMDK or a number of VMDK files is made up of 2 types of files:
• VMDK And
• *-flat.vmdk
VMDK plays as a plain text pointer for the *-flat.vmdk and where the * denoted as the VM Server’s name. Because of some situation if a .vmdk file of your VM gets corrupt and you constantly failing to start the Virtual Machine then following the mentioned steps might help you recover VMDK file in VMware:
Method 1:
- First, create a backup copy of the original VMDK that is the pointer file as discussed above.
- Now proceed by making a copy of the point file from a different VM to your system.
- Make the relevant modifications to the fields and save the changes.
- Now boot the Virtual Machine.
Method 2:
- Open the command line (cmd.exe)
- Navigate to the local installation of your VMware Dev kit (mine is the default C:\Program Files\VMWare\Virtual Disk Development Kit\bin
- Type the following command “vmware-vsdiskmanager.exe” –R “the fully qualified path to your corrupt VMDK”
- Hit Enter
NOTE: This may sound easy to execute but the hard part in it all is getting Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors exactly according to the size of your *-flat.vmdk file correctly.
Most of the users fail to do so and wind up wondering how they would recover VMDK file of VMware file now? However, simply using third-party tools has the enough capability to handle all sorts of VMDK file corruption.
VMDK Recovery software here would prove to be the absolute right solution for you if you are unaware of the reason to which your VMDK file got damaged. And also if you are not technically sound to resolve such issues by yourself. VMDK Recovery will assist you in performing a user-friendly recovery from corrupt VMDK file on VMware Machine without any loss of data.
I tried the mnaul approach to fix vmdk error. The article helped me a lot, you can also try:
https://queries365.wordpress.com/2018/03/06/how-to-fix-vmdk-cannot-be-opened-directly-for-writing/
Thanks for the article. I have a question. How does a vmdk file get corrupted? Is there a way to keep them from getting corrupted?
The only instance I can think of is if a vMotion process fails and the vm gets corrupted during vMotion. Please let me know if I am correct and if there are any other ways it can get corrupt.
Nice information and thanks for sharing...
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