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How do I undelete a VMWare disk (.VMDK) ?
I was multitasking this morning and accidentally deleted the wrong VMWare disk from the VM console. The disk was located on a separate physical disk only used for this virtual machine, so nothing else has been written to the drive.
When I tried to use several undelete utilities I was able to find the server.VMDK file, but it was 0 bytes.
Is there anything else I can do? OnTrack isn't an option, since this data isn't that valuable to the company; however it has value to me.
Regards
When I tried to use several undelete utilities I was able to find the server.VMDK file, but it was 0 bytes.
Is there anything else I can do? OnTrack isn't an option, since this data isn't that valuable to the company; however it has value to me.
Regards
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michote
And you don't have to do it, there are a lot of background processes that are constantly writing to the hard drive. This is a lost cause, if undelete utilities don't find it. The data is gone.
1. Sorry to say that you're out of luck. There is no 'undelete' functionality in the VMware tools, and I don't believe there are any undelete tools out there that understand the VMFS file system. You'll need to recover from a backup.
On the other hand, VMware support *may* have a tool. It's worth logging a call and asking the question.
2.Probably a good time to set up AD authentication on your ESX servers and turn off root login from ssh. A non-root user would not have been able to delete the vmdk file without using sudo or 'su -' first. Also make sure that rm is aliased to 'rm -i'.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_esxcfg_auth_tn.pdf has more information
On the other hand, VMware support *may* have a tool. It's worth logging a call and asking the question.
2.Probably a good time to set up AD authentication on your ESX servers and turn off root login from ssh. A non-root user would not have been able to delete the vmdk file without using sudo or 'su -' first. Also make sure that rm is aliased to 'rm -i'.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_esxcfg_auth_tn.pdf has more information
It is a normal server, not ESX.
ASKER
This is not ESX. It's running on a Windows hosted formatted NTFS.
Sounds like my drive may have gone to data heaven.
Sounds like my drive may have gone to data heaven.
Yep, I am sorry.
ASKER
Thanks for the quick response. I finally had to accept reality :( Fortunately the loss of data was only an annoyance and not mission critical.