Always take a checksum (MD5) of the -flat.vmdk before editing. One wrong space in the descriptor file is fine—it will throw an error. One wrong offset? That corrupts the partition table.
Run this command against the flat file:
We’ve all been there. You go to power on a virtual machine, and instead of a familiar boot screen, you’re greeted by an error: “Failed to open disk: The file specified is not a virtual disk.” restore vmdk descriptor file
Have you recovered a VM using this method? Let me know in the comments below!
Don't panic. You don't need backups of the entire VM to fix this. You just need to rebuild a 1KB text file. Always take a checksum (MD5) of the -flat
Create a new file named exactly like the original (e.g., WindowsServer.vmdk ) using vi or nano .
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "[CYLINDERS]" ddb.geometry.heads = "255" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.longContentID = "b5e0dbe93277d7e7d70505c1" ddb.thinProvisioned = "0" ddb.toolsVersion = "0" ddb.uuid = "6000C299-1234-5678-9abc-def123456789" ddb.virtualHWVersion = "13" That corrupts the partition table
# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=fffffffe parentCID=ffffffff createType="monolithicFlat" RW [SIZE_IN_SECTORS] VMFS "vmname-flat.vmdk" The Disk Data Base #DDB