Restore Vmdk Descriptor File __exclusive__ Online
Always take a checksum (MD5) of the -flat.vmdk before editing. One wrong space in the descriptor file is fine—it will throw an error. One wrong offset? That corrupts the partition table.
ls -la *.vmdk stat vmname-flat.vmdk You need the . Write this number down.
Disaster Recovery: How to Manually Restore a Corrupt or Missing VMDK Descriptor File restore vmdk descriptor file
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "[CYLINDERS]" ddb.geometry.heads = "255" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.longContentID = "b5e0dbe93277d7e7d70505c1" ddb.thinProvisioned = "0" ddb.toolsVersion = "0" ddb.uuid = "6000C299-1234-5678-9abc-def123456789" ddb.virtualHWVersion = "13"
We’ve all been there. You go to power on a virtual machine, and instead of a familiar boot screen, you’re greeted by an error: “Failed to open disk: The file specified is not a virtual disk.” Always take a checksum (MD5) of the -flat
Create a new file named exactly like the original (e.g., WindowsServer.vmdk ) using vi or nano .
Run this command against the flat file:
# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=fffffffe parentCID=ffffffff createType="monolithicFlat" RW [SIZE_IN_SECTORS] VMFS "vmname-flat.vmdk" The Disk Data Base #DDB