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JaPeS69
Contributor
Contributor

Recovering accidental deleted VMDK flat files

Hi Guys,

I know I'm asking a questions where the answer is probably No! I have a VM that is not starting up as the VMDK file has been accidentally deleted. Wondering if it is possible to recover? Has ESX got a recycle bin like option?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Regards

JaPeS

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3 Replies
piaroa
Expert
Expert

Sorry, but no. VMFS has no undelete features. Does your SAN/NAS take snapshots ?

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Unfortunately, there is no 'recycle bin'

Unless you have backed up your VM uyou are out of luck.

vmdk files – These are the disk  files that are created for each virtual hard drive in your VM. There are  3 different types of files that use the vmdk extension, they are:

o     *–flat.vmdk  file - This is the actual raw disk file that is created for each  virtual hard drive. Almost all of a .vmdk file's content is the virtual  machine's data, with a small portion allotted to virtual machine  overhead. This file will be roughly the same size as your virtual hard  drive.

o     *.vmdk  file – This isn't the file containing the raw data anymore. Instead it  is the disk descriptor file which describes the size and geometry of the  virtual disk file. This file is in text format and contains the name of  the –flat.vmdk file for which it is associated with and also the hard  drive adapter type, drive sectors, heads and cylinders, etc. One of  these files will exist for each virtual hard drive that is assigned to  your virtual machine. You can tell which –flat.vmdk file it is  associated with by opening the file and looking at the Extent  Description field.

o     *–delta.vmdk file - This is the differential file  created when you take a snapshot of a VM (also known as REDO log). When  you snapshot a VM it stops writing to the base vmdk and starts writing  changes to the snapshot delta file. The snapshot delta will initially be  small and then start growing as changes are made to the base vmdk file,  The delta file is a bitmap of the changes to the base vmdk thus is can  never grow larger than the base vmdk. A delta file will be created for  each snapshot that you create for a VM. These files are automatically  deleted when the snapshot is deleted or reverted in snapshot manager.

You can recover from the second 2 being deleted, but the flat file means the data is gone.
One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Have a look at:  http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9972

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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