Few things trigger a SysAdmin’s fight-or-flight response like logging into vSphere and seeing a datastore showing as "Not Mounted" or "Invalid Partition" . Your heart sinks. VMs are down. Backups? Let’s not talk about that right now.
esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -l YourDatastoreName If that fails, use vmfs6-recover (available in ESXi 7.x+): data recovery vmfs partition
But here is the good news: In most cases, the partition table is just hiding, or the VMFS header is slightly corrupted. You can get your VMs back. Backups
Instead, take a deep breath and follow the steps below. SSH into your ESXi host and run: You can get your VMs back
partedUtil fix /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6000c29... The GUID AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 is the VMFS data partition type. Do not change it. Step 4: Mount the Recovered Datastore Once the partition table is back, ESXi still won't auto-mount it. You need to force a mount:
vmfs6-recover /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6000c29... This scans for stale VMFS signatures and can reattach the partition without data loss. If auto-recovery fails, you need to manually recreate the partition table exactly as it was.
ls /vmfs/devices/disks/ Look for your device (e.g., naa.6000c29... ). Then check partition info: