Fortunately, a corrupted VMDK is not always a death sentence for your data. This guide explores the anatomy of a VMDK, common causes of corruption, and the step-by-step methods to recover and repair these critical files.
Sometimes the actual data (the -flat.vmdk file) is still on the disk, but the small descriptor file ( .vmdk ) that tells VMware how to read it is corrupted or deleted. Steps to Recreate: recover vmdk file
VMware provides built-in tools to help recover VMDK files: Fortunately, a corrupted VMDK is not always a