VMFS Recovery

Recovers data from ESX server

Opening a disk

To open the disk double click on it and you'll see following wizard:

Disk recovery wizard
  • Full Recovery – scans entire disk surface and reconstructs file system from leftovers and found files. Approximate scan speed about 2-3 hours per 1 Tb. Scan speed corresponds to disk performance, so scan should be faster for SSDs and RAID disks and slower for reconstructed RAID 5 and 6 levels because of complicated calculations.

    Please note: you need to select proper file system at this mode, as it uses for a cases when original file system was formatted to another one, and you need to restore data from previous file system avoiding false detection from current file system.

  • Fast scan (Uneraser) – scans only present file system. Displays deleted files.

  • Reader – opens present file system as any file manager would do. Deleted files are not detected.

We recommend to use “Fast Recovery (Uneraser)" mode, it is fast and usually sufficient for 90% of all cases. Besides, opening disk in Uneraser mode should take up to 20 minutes max, and if it fails you can continue to “Full Recovery". “Reader" works almost instantly and is also useful for the cases when you need just access the data and file system is intact.

Please note: we don't recommend to use “Full Recovery" with reconstructed RAID disks. As Raid Wizard use file system to detect proper RAID configuration, we won't be able to reconstruct array with damaged file system, there is no sense to scan RAID disk at this mode, unless you are instructed to do this by our support team.

Unlike other modes “Full Recovery" also asks to set up “Power Search" settings:

Disk recovery wizard: Power search setup

“Power Search" is our implementation of File Carving technique. However it has limited use because such technique unable to recover fragmented files, file names, file attributes and folder structure.

We recommend either turn on search for required file types or turn “Power Search" off to speed up the scan. If all “Power Search" options turned on, it will reduce scan speed about 30%.

Even with such limitations “Power Search" can be the only one solution for a cases when datastore contained only single VM, disk had low fragmentation or files that you need to restore are less then sector size large.

If “Power Search" was turned off, it can be started after disk is opened by clicking “Recover More Files" button.

Recover more files button


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