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we had a disk failure on our VM host (VMWare ESXI 5.1).

We've managed to get some of the data off but some of the file we couldn't get as it kept on causing the disk to crash.

I have file like MyServer-000001.vmdk and MyServer-000002.vmdk and so on but I don't have the MyServer.vmdk or MyServer-flat.vmdk files.

I am assuming the MyServer-0000001.vmdk files are snapshots disks. Is there a way I can tell the VM to use these VMDK's files instead as when I select it and try to power on the server it says that it couldn't find the disk image or the required snapshots.

If possible we really need to be able to recover this VM.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Boardy
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  • Have you read this? http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1015180 – BSO Network Solutions Feb 16 '15 at 21:20
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    I'm sorry Boardy, I'm sure you don't want to hear this but I'm going to say it: Where are your backups?! – joeqwerty Feb 16 '15 at 21:20
  • How does the loss of a drive cause data loss? Was your datastore not on a RAID array of some type? – joeqwerty Feb 16 '15 at 21:27
  • @joeqwerty that is a very good question, we didn't have backups of the actual VM itself, we got backups of the actual stuff within the server but not the server itself – Boardy Feb 16 '15 at 21:28
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    @joeqwerty Unfortunately the raid was set incorrectly, the raid was set to raid 0 so it was striped across 2 drives (the only 2 drives) so when one drive failed the whole lot was lost. It should have been raid 1 – Boardy Feb 16 '15 at 21:30
  • The delta disks (snapshots) are just that, delta disks. They contain the changes that have occurred from the parent disk since the snapshot was taken. They are not copies of the parent disk. Without the parent disk I don't think there's anything you can do. – joeqwerty Feb 16 '15 at 21:44

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I was in a similar situation myself about 4 months ago. You're hosed. Sorry.

Without the base disk (MyServer.vmdk) there is nothing you can do.

Thankfully I was able to pull out backups for most of the data, but the remaining data cost us almost $20,000 and 4 weeks to get back.

Chalk this up to a learning experience.

Mark Henderson
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  • Damn it, I was thinking that was case, really hoping it wasn't though. I have half of the base disk, I couldn't grab it all as everytime i tried the disk crashed but if I have and all the snapshots is anything I can do – Boardy Feb 16 '15 at 21:53