3

We're running VMware Server 2.0 as the host, and Windows 2003 as the guest. We started getting the error message below. From some quick searching it appears that we probably have a corrupt vmdk file. Any suggestions on tools to check the consistency or repair the vmdk file? 

Message from server-1001.domain.com: Operation on file "F:\Virtual Machines\ati-ntserver1\Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition-3.vmdk" failed.
If the file resides on a remote file system, please make sure your network connection and the server where this disk resides are functioning properly. If the file resides on removable media, reattach the media.
Choose Retry to attempt the operation again.
Choose Abort to terminate this session.
Choose Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system.

The is not on a remote file system or removable media. Pressing continue on the Guest will continue for a couple hours but then the error comes back.

HopelessN00b
  • 53,795
  • 33
  • 135
  • 209
Aaron
  • 1,002
  • 1
  • 12
  • 18

1 Answers1

3

If it is mounting and running for a while despite the message, perhaps the easiest way would be to clone the contents of the vmdk to a new vmdk file? (using traditional cloning or copy tools)

You can use the Vmware diskmount utility to mount the file as a normal disk in another machine and do the copy/clone from there.

Check the host event log for any disk related problems, it could still be the local storage acting up.

Oskar Duveborn
  • 10,760
  • 3
  • 33
  • 48
  • Thanks Oskar, that is what we've been doing, moving the data off of it while it is up. I was curious if there was a supported VMware tool that could diagnosis and possibly fix corrupted vmdk files. The host event log doesn't have much, but the vmware log has random complaints about Disk I/O, waiting x number of seconds to comoplete a write. – Aaron May 04 '09 at 13:30
  • Sadly I don't think there's such a tool out there yet, but several recovery services announce their will to help out (for a hefty sum) pretty much in the style you can get damaged hard disks repaired for your pieces of eight... but I'd love to be proven wrong ^^ (is this isolated to a single host, tried this on some other hardware just to rule out hardware problems?) – Oskar Duveborn May 04 '09 at 14:04