A delta file is not a complete disk. It contains only "changed blocks" and requires the (the -flat.vmdk or original .vmdk ) and any previous snapshots in the chain to be readable. 2. Manual Reconstitution (ESXi Command Line)
If your Virtual Machine (VM) won't power on because it "cannot find a parent disk," the descriptor file might be corrupted or missing. 1. Manually Reconstructing the Descriptor recover data from vmdk delta files
# Clone delta to new independent VMDK (flatten) vmkfstools -i orphaned-delta.vmdk recovered-flat.vmdk -d thin A delta file is not a complete disk