[Generated for instructional purposes] Date: April 2026 Subject: VMware vSphere Data Recovery & Virtual Disk Management
In virtualized data centers, VMware ESXi hosts store VM disks as .vmdk files on VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) datastores. A single VMDK can range from a few gigabytes to multiple terabytes. Deleting a VMDK—whether through vSphere Client, CLI, or automated scripts—removes the pointer to disk blocks, but the raw data often remains on disk until overwritten. Understanding the recovery process is essential for administrators to minimize downtime and data loss.
Connect to the host via an SSH client (such as PuTTY) and run the following commands to locate the directory and find the exact byte size of the raw flat file: vmware recover deleted vmdk
(Replace 42949672960 with your exact disk byte size, and lsilogic with your controller type). Step 5: Link the New Descriptor to Your Flat File
VMware's virtual machines (VMs) rely on Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) files to store their data. Accidentally deleting a VMDK file can lead to data loss and disruption of critical services. Fortunately, VMware provides several methods to recover deleted VMDK files. This guide outlines the steps to recover a deleted VMDK in VMware. Accidentally deleting a VMDK file can lead to
Search for any automated taken prior to the deletion window.
Move-DatastoreItem -Path "[Datastore] VM/disk.vmdk" -Destination "[Datastore] Trash/" vmware recover deleted vmdk
to the datastore to ensure the deleted sectors are not overwritten.