How to repaire a vmdk that is "is corrupted and cannot be repaired."

Question

I was running a virtual machine in VMware Fusion 11 when my computer crashed. When I tried to start it up again I saw an error message informing me that "The disk has one or more internal errors that cannot be fixed."

Is there a way I can fix this?

Answer 1

Try using vmware-vdiskmanager to repair the image.

Since VMware already likely tried running this command on its own, this probably will not help, but it's the easiest thing to try.

On macOS with VMware Fusion open terminal and change directory to /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library

./vmware-vdiskmanager -R /path/to/your_corrupted_disk.vmdk

If you get a message saying that The virtual disk, '/path/to/your_corrupted_disk.vmdk', is corrupted and cannot be repaired. Try using StarWind V2V Converter on Windows to repair the disk.

1. Download StarWind V2V Converter from https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter, and install it on a Windows PC.
2. Make a copy of your_corrupted_disk.vmdk along with all related .vmdks. (your_corrupted_disk-s001.vmdk, your_corrupted_disk-s002.vmdk, ...). Best to copy the whole parent directory.
3. Use StarWind to convert it from a local vmdk to a local vmdk. It will flatten all your "*.vmdk" files into a single file
4. Create a new virtual machine and select to "use an existing virtual disk" and point it to the fixed version.