How To Recover A Deleted Vmdk File From A Datastore [UPDATED]

If your datastore is NFS:

This article explores methods to recover deleted VMDK files from VMFS datastores. how to recover a deleted vmdk file from a datastore

Why? Deleting a file in VMFS simply removes its pointer and marks the blocks as free. Writing new data can overwrite those blocks, making recovery impossible. If your datastore is NFS: This article explores

The moment you realize a VMDK has been deleted, . When a file is deleted in VMFS, the metadata is marked as free, but the actual data blocks often remain until they are overwritten by new data. Continued disk activity significantly increases the risk of permanent data loss. Method 1: Restore from Backup or Snapshots Writing new data can overwrite those blocks, making

However, all is not necessarily lost. Unlike deleting a file in Windows, which moves it to a Recycle Bin, deleting a VMDK from a datastore via the vSphere Client or CLI usually unlinks the file pointer from the file system, marking the space as available.