Vmfs - Partition Table Recovery ((top))

We've all felt that cold sweat moment. You log into vCenter or ESXi, look at your storage devices, and see a datastore marked as or simply "Invalid partition table." Your VMs are inaccessible. Your heart rate spikes.

partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001234567890 If you see Unknown or an empty table, the partition table is missing. Use vmkfstools to scan for VMFS superblocks without relying on the partition table:

Check partition table:

You can dump the last few sectors using dd and look for "EFI PART" signature:

The Ultimate Guide to VMFS Partition Table Recovery: When Your Datastore Goes Dark vmfs partition table recovery

Good luck, and may your sector scans be clean. Have your own VMFS partition table horror story or recovery trick? Share it in the comments.

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. We've all felt that cold sweat moment

vmkfstools -V --config /scratch/config Or more directly: