How To Recover A Deleted Vmdk File From A Datastore |best| -

You will need to clone the recovered disk to a new file (to give it a proper name) or attach it to a VM. However, because the files in .lost+found lack descriptors, you may need to manually create a descriptor file pointing to the flat file—a process that requires careful hex editing or cloning via vmkfstools .

VMFS (VMware File System) versions 5 and 6 maintain a .lost+found directory at the root of the datastore. When files become orphaned (usually due to a crash or abrupt termination of a process), the VMFS file system checker may move them here instead of deleting them. how to recover a deleted vmdk file from a datastore