Re: How to locate the physical location of a VMware Workstation v10.0.3 vmdk drives when snapshots are present.
Hi,
It's been almost five months since I worked on a particular project and I'm trying to refamiliarize myself with the project's details. The VM had three virtual disks. I recall that the VM's OS as well as the VM's first data disk's vmdk files are in the Windows host folder that holds the VM. Nothing unusual so far. I recall that I put the VM's third drive on my physical F: spindle, but I want to make certain of that before starting new work on the project.
I see from http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003880 that we should be able to examine the vmx file and see the virtual disk locations. What I've noticed is that since I have one snapshot, I see this:
scsi0:2.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:2.fileName = "MyProject-Disk3-000001.vmdk"
So what I'm seeing in the vmx is the physical location of the snapshot delta disk, and not the physical location of the vmdk.
I've also done a search of vmware-x.log files for vmdk and I find :
2014-03-21T11:35:46.964-04:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened [0]: "MyProject-Disk3.vmdk" (0xe)
2014-03-21T11:35:46.964-04:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-LINK : Opened 'F:\MyProject-Disk3\MyProject-Disk3.vmdk' (0xe): monolithicSparse, 83886080 sectors / 40 GB.
2014-03-21T11:35:46.964-04:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-LIB : Opened "G:\VMware VMs\MyProject\MyProject-Disk3-000001.vmdk" (flags 0xa, type monolithicSparse).
So by brute force I've discovered that the parent vmdk for the VM's Disk3 is on physical drive F. And even here, the only reason I'm sure that I have the correct VM disk, is because I included "Disk3" in the VM's disk naming convention that I used.
But what if I had not used a physical VM disk naming convention that did not included the VM's virtual disk name? How would I have been 100% sure that my VM's third disk was the parent vmdk that I had located on physical drive F ?
There has to be an easier way to do this for days just like this.
I look forward to your reply.
Regards . . .
P.S. I did notice that if I close that VM and click on Hard Disk 3 (SCSI), it shows only the name of the VM's delta file "MyProject-Disk3-000001.vmdk", and not the parent vmdk.
P.S. I did notice that if I close that VM and try to use the disk Utilities, MAP shows only the path to the delta file "MyProject-Disk3-000001.vmdk", and not the parent vmdk.