Before attempting any recovery, follow these rules to prevent permanent data loss:
Before diving into recovery, let's diagnose the problem. Data loss on a VMFS volume typically stems from: vmfs data recovery
If a datastore is removed from an ESXi host improperly, the "lock files" may persist on the storage. When attempting to mount the volume for recovery, the file system may refuse access because it believes the volume is still owned by a missing host. Before attempting any recovery, follow these rules to
Modern VMFS environments rely heavily on snapshots. When a snapshot is taken, the original VMDK becomes read-only, and a delta file is created to track changes. If a user needs to recover a file from a previous state, the process is straightforward if the snapshot still exists: simply mount the snapshot. Modern VMFS environments rely heavily on snapshots
Sometimes the data is intact, but the file system metadata is broken. Try these ESXi console commands first: