Repairing a virtual disk in Workstation
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Repairing a virtual disk in Workstation

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Article ID: 329347

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Updated On:

Products

VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to repair a virtual disk of a VMware Workstation virtual machine in Linux and Windows hosts.

Symptoms:
  • The virtual machine fails to start after a forced host shutdown.
  • The virtual machine does not start after a failure.
  • When starting the virtual machine, you see an error similar to:

    Cannot open the disk 'path_to_virtual machine/virtual_disk.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: The specified virtual disk needs repair.
     
  • When trying to mount the virtual disk with VMDKMounter, you see the error:

    There is a problem trying to mount the virtual disk.


Environment

VMware Workstation 11.x (for Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 15.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 14.x (for Windows)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 11.x (for Linux)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 10.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 10.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 15.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 14.x (for Linux)

Resolution

Linux Host

To repair a virtual disk of a Workstation virtual machine in a Linux host, use the vmware-vdiskmanager utility that is installed by the Workstation installer in the /usr/bin folder on a Linux host.
 
To use the virtual disk repair utility on a Linux host:
  1. Open a terminal window in the Linux host.
  2. Run this command:

    /usr/bin/vmware-vdiskmanager -R <path of the vmdk(virtual disk)>

    Note: Where <path of the vmdk(virtual disk)> is the folder path to the virtual disk that appeared in the error.

Windows Host

To repair a virtual disk of a Workstation virtual machine in a Windows host, use the vmware-vdiskmanager utility that is installed by the Workstation installer in the installation folder on a Windows host.
 
To use the virtual disk repair utility on a Windows host:
  1. Open a command prompt. For more information, see https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=1003892
  2. Navigate to the directory where Workstation is installed. By default, this directory is located at:
     
    • Windows XP – C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation
    • Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 32bit – C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation
    • Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 64bit – C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 – C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation
    • Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 64bit/Windows 10 – C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation
       
  3. Run the command:

    vmware-vdiskmanager -R "<path of the vmdk(virtual disk>"

    Note: Where < path of the vmdk(virtual disk> is the complete path to the virtual disk that requires repair as reported in the error.

    Example: vmware-vdiskmanager -R "D:\Virtual Machine\Windows 7\virtualdisk.vmdk"


Additional Information

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