Descriptor File — Restore Vmdk

Don't panic. You don't need backups of the entire VM to fix this. You just need to rebuild a 1KB text file.

vi WindowsServer.vmdk Here is a standard template for a monolithic sparse or monolithic flat disk. You must change the values in brackets. restore vmdk descriptor file

Run this command against the flat file:

Disaster Recovery: How to Manually Restore a Corrupt or Missing VMDK Descriptor File Don't panic

# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=fffffffe parentCID=ffffffff createType="monolithicFlat" RW [SIZE_IN_SECTORS] VMFS "vmname-flat.vmdk" The Disk Data Base #DDB restore vmdk descriptor file

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.