VMFS Recovery

Recovers data from ESX server

Saving recovered data


Foreword



  • Save feature available in registered versions only

  • If you need to check integrity of recovered data before purchase, please use built-in preview

  • You can mount recovered VMDK files as a disk images and check integrity of VMDK's internal data too


Optimizing recovery time

Save speed: mostly depends on read speed of your media or FTP\SSH throughput. Normally SSH throughput is at least 5 times slower than a local hard drive. Consider moving VMFS disk to Windows PC, boot Windows instead of ESX, or use FibreChannel\iSCSI interfaces. Additional time spent on re-configuration could be insignificant compared to gain in save speed, especially for a large amount of data.

Plan save process: as you'll probably need to save VMDK files to NTFS and then upload them back to the ESX server. It is possible to optimize download from ESX, but vSphere is the only way to upload data back to the production server. vSphere also use SSH to upload files to the ESX server.

Partial save: In some cases it's worth to create a new(or clone existing) virtual machine, install OS and necessary software then connect to VM and upload only significant data, such as a database or most recent files to work with. This method allows to cut the amount of transferred data and usually applicable on low-speed connections.

Export Wizard

To save recovered data, select files and folder to be saved and click "Recover" button on the main toolbar.

Select files and folders to be saved

Export Wizard will start. And there are three options available:

Export recovered data wizard

Save Files – copies recovered data to the disks at the same system.

Please note: it's impossible to save recovered data to the same disks you are recovering from, as well as write to the disks with file systems unavailable to Windows OS. For example: you can save to NTFS, FAT, ReFS disks and unable to save to VMFS, EXT or ZFS disks. Actual list of supported file systems is limited to your Windows version and\or specific software installed.

Mount to system

– mounts virtual disk to the Windows which can be accessed by any file manager or any other software present at the system.

Virtual disk mounted to system as local drive

Select a letter which is not used by any other disks at the system and click "Mount" button.

virtual disk has been mounted to system as local drive

An Explorer window with a new disk should be opened and available to browse and copy.

Please note: In context menu after right mouse click on a partition or physical drive, there is an option "Mount to disk letter". The result will be pretty same as mounting a folder or several folders, but there is also a file called "Storage" without extension. It's located at the root folder of the new drive and is actually a disk image of the mounted disk.

File that represents a disk image of the mounted drive

Thus to save a disk image you need to copy "Storage" to back up location and use it like any other disk image file. You can also rename it to ".img", ".bin" or ".dsk" file type, as all of them represent same binary file with contents of the disk from 0-th to the last bit of the disk.

Upload to FTP -- starts built-in FTP client which allows transfer recovered data to FTP Server. Simply enter Host Name, User Name and Password to connect to available FTP server with existing user account.

FTP connection settings




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