VMware ESX - Recreating a missing virtual disk (VMDK) header/descriptor file

This article guides you through recreating a lost header/descriptor file.

You may need to recreate a missing header/descriptor file if:

• The virtual machine disk is missing when viewing the VM folder from a Datastore browser
• You can see the –flat.vmdk file does exist when connected to the host via command line
• The .vmdk descriptor file for the virtual machines disk does not exist or is corrupted
• When powering on a virtual machine you see a File not found error

The disk drives of a virtual machine are represented by a pair of .vmdk files. One is a small text file, containing descriptive data about the virtual hard disk. The second is the actual contents of that disk, and is usually the same size as the drive.

For example, a 10GB disk has a 10GB .vmdk file. These content files have -flat appended to the name of the virtual machine, like virtualDisk-flat.vmdk. The descriptive file of this set is virtualDisk.vmdk.

See:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1002511&sliceId=2&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=41572215&stateId=0%200%2039524425