: Right-click the affected VM in Workstation, select Settings > Hard Disk , and click the Repair button. 2. Archive Extractors (Light Corruption)
If the file system is heavily damaged (e.g., showing "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable"), standard mounting will fail. You need specialized data recovery software. extract files from corrupt vmdk
If the corruption is limited to boot records but the data partitions are intact, simple extractors can often "see" inside the container. : Right-click the affected VM in Workstation, select
Copy the .vmdk descriptor file from the dummy VM to the corrupt VM’s folder. You need specialized data recovery software
If you are working directly on an ESXi host, the vmkfstools command is your best friend. It can clone a corrupt disk into a new, healthy descriptor. Connect to your host via . Navigate to the VM folder in /vmfs/volumes/ . Run: vmkfstools -i corrupt.vmdk recovered.vmdk