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.

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"