We know that everyone at some point in their life has experienced a loss of their vital data. As losing important data may severely affect the whole business or someone personal life. So it is very important to take backup of the entire data. To back up, their important data the user can use any type of storage devices such as hard drive, pen drive and virtual machine. But the most widely used to take the backup of the data is a virtual machine. If the data gets deleted from the virtual machine then the user wants to know how to recover deleted files from the virtual machine.
What is VMDK file format?
The VMDK file extension is the “Virtual Machine Disk” file format. It’s an open file format provided by Vmware, mostly used for services for cloud computing and virtualisation. Basically, virtual machine disk file containing all the information of a virtual machine. The VMDK file completes with the Microsoft Virtual Hard disk format used with Virtual Server and Hyper-V hypervisors. With the help of this article, we will tell you methods to recover lost VMDK file data.
Is It Possible to Recover Deleted Files from Virtual Machine?
We know that deleted files can be recovered from the hard drive before lost files get overwritten. Virtual disk stores files in the same way as hard drives. Operating system stores files keeps track of files stored on a hard disk file with the help of file system, or specifically pointers.
When the users delete a file from virtual disk, operating system deletes file information from the pointers and mark sectors occupied by the file as available. So for Windows perspective, the file is no longer available for read or write operations, as it has been deleted. However, the deleted file is still recoverable before new data overwrites sector containing deleted data.
How to Recover Deleted Files From Virtual Hard Disk
Note – If the user has deleted important files and wants to recover files from the virtual machine then certain things the user has to note:
- Once the user is aware of the data loss the user has to perform recover files as soon as possible. We know that operating system continues writing data to the hard disk, while it is working such as temporary files, cache. Overwriting in the hard disk file reduces the chances of successful recovery of the data. Therefore the user must have to perform recovery of the file as soon as possible to recover lost VMDK file data.
- To avoid data overwrite the user should not try to use the disk before files are recovered. The best reaction to data loss situation is using the disk as little as possible. If the data was available on the system partition then the user can shut down the computer and plug the disk into another computer and start the recovery process to recover lost VMDK file data.
Method 1: Manual Method to Recover Deleted Files from the Virtual Machine
We know that files deleted from virtual disk will be moved to recycle bin first. So deleted file recovery can be started from Recycle Bin. File deleted from the virtual disk can be a move to recycle bin first. Thus the first thing the user has to do it is opening the recycle bin and look for the deleted files. In case if the user finds the file from there then the user can restore them directly. And if the files have been deleted and recycle bin has been emptied then the user has to try the following steps to recover data from VMDK file.
Note– If the user is unable to recover lost VMDK file data in that case user can prefer an automated solution to recover deleted files from VMDK.
Method 2: Automated Solution to Recover Lost VMDK File Data
Here is the automated solution VMware recovery software to recover deleted files from the virtual machine which helps the user to recover files in a single click. Follow the certain steps to recover lost VMDK file data efficiently:
- Download and Install the software.
- Click on Scan button.
- Click on Browse and add the virtual machine file folder.
- Select the VM folder and click OK.
- Click on Scan button to scan the virtual machine file.
Final Words
Corruption and lost file problems have now become a very common issue. So from the above write-up, one can get the ideas regarding how to recover deleted files from Virtual machine. We have discussed with the help of manual and automated solution to this problem. Thus the user can select any of the two methods discussed above. In case if the user is not able to retrieve files from VMDK . Then the user can prefer the automated solution to recover files from the virtual machine.
