For VMFS6, use:
Introduction In any vSphere environment, the datastore is the fundamental storage container that holds virtual machines (VMs), ISO images, templates, and other critical files. When a datastore becomes inaccessible, corrupted, or suffers data loss, the impact is immediate and severe: VMs may fail to power on, storage vMotion operations halt, and in worst-case scenarios, production workloads are completely offline. recovery vmware datastore
vmkfstools -V esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -u <UUID> Find the UUID using: esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list For VMFS6, use: Introduction In any vSphere environment,
If metadata corruption is suspected, run: identifying the root cause
fsck.vmfs -D /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxx If the VMFS partition is missing, recreate it manually without overwriting data:
Recovering a VMware datastore is a high-stakes operation. Success depends on understanding the underlying storage architecture, identifying the root cause, and applying the correct recovery methodology—whether that involves repairing file system metadata, restoring from backups, or using data recovery tools.
vmfs-fuse /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxx /mnt/repair (This mounts read-only; you can copy data out.)