Vmfs Partition Table - Recovery

This post is a deep dive into recovering a lost or corrupted VMFS partition table. I’ll cover theory, common causes, diagnostic tools, and step-by-step recovery procedures. A VMFS datastore lives inside a primary partition (type 0xFB for VMFS3 or 0xFC for VMFS5/6) on a disk or LUN. The partition table (usually GPT, sometimes MBR on older systems) sits at the very beginning of the disk (LBA 0) and contains a small entry pointing to the start sector and length of that VMFS partition.

partedUtil restore /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001234567890 This command looks for the secondary GPT at the end of the disk and restores the primary. after a disk was mistakenly partitioned with a different tool. Method C: Using vgfs (Linux-based recovery) – For advanced users If ESXi tools fail, boot a Linux live CD (Ubuntu, SystemRescue) and install vmfs-tools : vmfs partition table recovery

ls -l /vmfs/devices/disks/ Look for the device that should be your datastore (e.g., naa.6001234567890 ). Note if there are no :1 , :2 , etc. partitions listed—only the base device. This post is a deep dive into recovering

Check partition table:

No recovery method replaces a verified backup. Use this knowledge to survive the crisis, then immediately double-check your 3-2-1 backup strategy. The partition table (usually GPT, sometimes MBR on