Recreating a missing virtual disk descriptor file of a Workstation virtual machine with disks split into 2GB files

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to recreate a virtual machine's virtual disk descriptor file for a virtual disk that is split across several 2GB extents.

Environment

VMware Workstation 6.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 6.x (Windows)

Resolution

A VMware Workstation virtual machine disk that is split into several 2GB files consists of a single descriptor and multiple extent files in sequence, based on the twoGbMaxExtentFlat or twoGbMaxExtentSparse disk format.

Note: For more information on virtual disk format, see Virtual Disk Format 5.0.

To recreate the virtual disk descriptor file:

1. Create a virtual disk descriptor file for use as a base or template. For more information, see Recreating a missing virtual machine disk (VMDK) descriptor file (1002511).
2. Open the descriptor file using a text editor.
3. Modify the createType entry to:
   
   createType = "twoGbMaxExtentSparse"
   
   Note: The createType value depends on the type of extent used when the virtual disk was created. It can either be twoGbMaxExtentFlat or twoGbMaxExtentSparse .
   
   
4. Locate the # Extent description section.
5. Replace the contents in this section with a list of your extents. For example:
   

   RW 4192256 SPARSE "vmdisk0-s001.vmdk"
   RW 4192256 SPARSE "vmdisk0-s002.vmdk"
   RW 2101248 SPARSE "vmdisk0-s003.vmdk"
   
   Note: The vmdk file name differs on every machine and depends on the name that you chose for the disk.
   

6. Modify the DDB entries to:

   ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"
   ddb.geometry.cylinders = "652"
   ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
   ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
   ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
   
   Note: The ddb.virtualHWVersion and ddb.adapterType differs based on your virtual machine settings.
   

7. Locate and remove this line from the descriptor file, unless this was originally a thin-provisioned virtual disk before losing the descriptor file:
   
   ddb.thinProvisioned = "1"