dcfldd if=/dev/sdX of=vmfs_disk.dd hash=sha256 hashlog=hash.txt bs=1M conv=noerror,sync # Or using ddrescue for failing drives ddrescue -f /dev/sdX vmfs_disk.dd vmfs_mapfile Commercial tools are often the fastest path:
1. Introduction VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a high-performance clustered file system designed for storing virtual machine disks (VMDKs), configuration files, and snapshots. Despite its robustness, VMFS volumes can become corrupted due to abrupt power loss, improper VMFS upgrades, faulty storage hardware, accidental formatting, or metadata corruption. vmfs recovery
dd if=vmfs_disk.dd bs=512 | strings -n 8 | grep -E "FD.4,8VMFS" Manually map FD number → block pointers. If you have the FD for a flat VMDK ( -flat.vmdk ), you can extract its data blocks sequentially using the FB table. dcfldd if=/dev/sdX of=vmfs_disk
vmfs-fuse -o ro /dev/loop0 /mnt/recovery If that fails, carve small files by known headers ( #! for VMX, KDMV for VMDK descriptor). Situation : An administrator ran vmkfstools -C vmfs5 /dev/disks/... on a datastore containing 12 production VMs. dd if=vmfs_disk
: Never trust a single VMFS datastore – replication and backups remain the only guaranteed recovery path. This write-up is for authorized forensic analysis and disaster recovery only. Always comply with software licensing and data privacy laws.