asked on 3/24/2013

Guest VM lost partition

I have a client that has an esxi 3 server running two Windows 2000 vm's and one has lost a partition over the weekend. Vsphere client also reports that the machine now has only one partition.

Anyone know how to locate this missing partition to see what is happening?

VMware Microsoft Legacy OS Microsoft Server OS

Last Comment

mbkitmgr

4/7/2013

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

3/24/2013

Is the partition missing in the Guest OS? If the Partition is missing in the Guest OS VM, you could try the following recovery products

@Active Partition Recovery

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

Disk Internals Partition Recovery

http://www.diskinternals.com/partition-recovery/

and

Data Recovery Wizard

http://www.easeus.com/

GetDataBack www.runtime.org

Does the VM have all the correct virtual disks connected?

The ESXi host server is not missing any datastores?

Paul Solovyovsky

3/25/2013

Did you browse the datastore? Is it missing from the datastore or only from the VM?

mbkitmgr

3/25/2013

ASKER

Hi guys - yes the data is short one VMDK file and its associated files. I am not that up to date on ESX 3 only recently having acquired the client..

To cut to the chase is this something that could only be done by deleting the files associated with the VM.

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

3/25/2013

yes, if the virtual disk has been deleted from the VM, the VM would lose a disk/OS Partition, and would require a restore.

You could try a recovery program to try and recover the vmdk.

e.g. Diskinternals VMFS Recovery

http://www.diskinternals.com/vmfs-recovery/

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

mbkitmgr

4/3/2013

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mbkitmgr

4/7/2013

ASKER

It was found to be an odd config