G-B57JWL4PY2

Here’s a concise technical review of recovering a deleted datastore in VMware ESXi. Summary Yes, recovery is often possible if the datastore was just removed from the inventory (not wiped) and the underlying VMFS partition remains intact. However, success depends on several factors. Key Recovery Methods 1. Rescan Storage Adapters (First Step)

If the datastore was accidentally unmounted or removed from inventory but not deleted from disk:

Go to Storage > Rescan Storage (or via CLI: esxcli storage core adapter rescan --all ) The datastore may reappear automatically.

2. Restore VMFS Datastore from CLI (No formatting)

If the datastore shows as “snapshot” or missing but partition is intact: esxcfg-volume -l # List snapshots esxcfg-volume -M <label> # Mount and resignature

Caution: Resignaturing changes the datastore UUID – VMs will need to be re-registered.

3. Recover Deleted Datastore via PartedUtil

If the partition table is corrupted but data remains: partedUtil getptbl <disk_id> # Recreate partition exactly as before (backup GPT table needed)

Advanced – requires knowing original start/end sectors.

What Prevents Recovery

Zeroing / low-level format of the LUN/disk. Overwriting the first ~1 MB of the VMFS partition (metadata destroyed). Removing the LUN mapping on SAN (if using iSCSI/FC). Recreating a new datastore on the same device without resignaturing.

Best Practices to Avoid Data Loss

Recover Deleted Datastore Esxi [patched] Jun 2026

Here’s a concise technical review of recovering a deleted datastore in VMware ESXi. Summary Yes, recovery is often possible if the datastore was just removed from the inventory (not wiped) and the underlying VMFS partition remains intact. However, success depends on several factors. Key Recovery Methods 1. Rescan Storage Adapters (First Step)

If the datastore was accidentally unmounted or removed from inventory but not deleted from disk:

Go to Storage > Rescan Storage (or via CLI: esxcli storage core adapter rescan --all ) The datastore may reappear automatically.

2. Restore VMFS Datastore from CLI (No formatting) recover deleted datastore esxi

If the datastore shows as “snapshot” or missing but partition is intact: esxcfg-volume -l # List snapshots esxcfg-volume -M <label> # Mount and resignature

Caution: Resignaturing changes the datastore UUID – VMs will need to be re-registered.

3. Recover Deleted Datastore via PartedUtil Here’s a concise technical review of recovering a

If the partition table is corrupted but data remains: partedUtil getptbl <disk_id> # Recreate partition exactly as before (backup GPT table needed)

Advanced – requires knowing original start/end sectors.

What Prevents Recovery

Zeroing / low-level format of the LUN/disk. Overwriting the first ~1 MB of the VMFS partition (metadata destroyed). Removing the LUN mapping on SAN (if using iSCSI/FC). Recreating a new datastore on the same device without resignaturing.

Best Practices to Avoid Data Loss