How To Fix Flat Vmdk May 2026

2025-03 Applicable VMware versions: ESXi 6.x, 7.x, 8.x

vmkfstools -i broken-flat.vmdk repaired.vmdk -d thin This reconstructs metadata and skips unreadable sectors (best-effort). Mount the raw flat file as a loop device on Linux: how to fix flat vmdk

1. Overview A flat VMDK is a raw, pre-allocated virtual disk file containing all the guest OS data in a monolithic, binary format (typically named vmname-flat.vmdk ). It is always paired with a small descriptor file ( vmname.vmdk ) containing geometry and metadata. 2025-03 Applicable VMware versions: ESXi 6