Restoring a deleted VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) from a VMware datastore requires immediate action to prevent the deleted data from being overwritten by new storage operations. Depending on what exactly was deleted and your available backups, you can use several manual or software-based recovery methods. 1. Immediate Critical Actions
If you see the large -flat.vmdk file in your datastore but the .vmdk file is missing, you have only deleted the descriptor. You can recreate it using the ESXi command line: restore deleted vmdk from datastore
Use your backup solution (e.g., Veeam or Dell VNXe Snapshots ) to restore the specific VMDK file to its original or a new location. 3. Professional Recovery Software Restoring a deleted VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) from
If no backups exist and the files are fully deleted from the VMFS file system, specialized tools can scan the raw datastore for remaining data blocks: Need to recover vmdk deleted from a datastore : r/vmware Immediate Critical Actions If you see the large -flat
: Look for your deleted VMDK in the list of recovered files.
If possible, take a storage-level snapshot or clone of the entire VMFS volume to a safe location before attempting recovery. 2. Manual Recovery Methods