VMDK recovery / vmware-mount: It is not safe to mount the virtual disk.

Hi,

I'm trying to recover a vmdk from a VMWare Workstation VM which apparently wasn't shutdown cleanly. I'm using vmware-mount to mount it, but all options I tried so far have failed miserably. My main goal is to recover a few small files (5 or so) that are missing from the most recent backup, but vmware-mount does not let me mount the disk. There seems to be no way to force vmware-mount to mount the disk.

Is there a way to force vmware-mount to mount it? Is the disk recoverable at all?

All help is appreciated.

Contents of the VM Dir:

rohan:/tmp/vmware-server-distrib# ls /oldhdd/home/oldhdd/dedicated/vmware/winxp/winxp/

564d4268-e02e-6e0c-a554-39f4b81b3086.vmem      Windows XP Professional-s003.vmdk

564d4268-e02e-6e0c-a554-39f4b81b3086.vmem.lck  Windows XP Professional-s003.vmdk.dfgshkgrw-tmp

Virtual Machine                                Windows XP Professional-s004.vmdk

vmware-0.log                                   Windows XP Professional-s005.vmdk

vmware-1.log                                   Windows XP Professional.vmdk.lck

vmware-2.log                                   Windows XP Professional.vmsd

vmware-core.gz                                 Windows XP Professional.vmx

vmware.log                                     Windows XP Professional.vmxf

Windows XP Professional.nvram                  Windows XP Professional.vmx.lck

Windows XP Professional-s001.vmdk              winxp.vmdk

Windows XP Professional-s002.vmdk

Message when mounting the directory (shouldn't be using that, I think?):

rohan:/tmp/vmware-server-distrib# vmware-mount -p /oldhdd/home/oldhdd/dedicated/vmware/winxp/winxp/

Failed to open disk: The object is not a file (5911013165649441)

Failed to mount disk: Cannot open the virtual disk

Message when mounting the file:

rohan:/tmp/vmware-server-distrib# vmware-mount -p /oldhdd/home/oldhdd/dedicated/vmware/winxp/winxp/winxp.vmdk

Failed to analyze snapshot chain '/oldhdd/home/oldhdd/dedicated/vmware/winxp/winxp/Windows XP Professional.vmx'.

Will not be able to make an informed decision based on partial information.

Failed to mount disk: It is not safe to mount the virtual disk.  It may be attached to a suspended or powered-on VM, or it may be inside a snapshot chain.

Contents of the winxp.vmdk:

1. Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

encoding="UTF-8"

CID=67f07721

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"

1. Extent description

RW 4192256 SPARSE "Windows XP Professional-s001.vmdk"

RW 4192256 SPARSE "Windows XP Professional-s002.vmdk"

RW 4192256 SPARSE "Windows XP Professional-s003.vmdk"

RW 4192256 SPARSE "Windows XP Professional-s004.vmdk"

RW 8192 SPARSE "Windows XP Professional-s005.vmdk"

1. The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 97 e5 0e b9 f9-d1 30 96 3f 33 50 4a 8b"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.toolsVersion = "7427"

{/quote}

Message was edited by: soczol