Need help recovering a VM from a corrupted LaCie? That’s another long story (involves vmdk repair tools and a lot of luck).
LaCie drives use bridges (ASMedia, JMicron, LSI) to convert SATA/NVMe to USB/Thunderbolt. These bridges implement . VMware issues low-level SCSI commands (e.g., SYNCHRONIZE CACHE , UNMAP , or REPORT LUNS ). Many LaCie bridges:
Then the VM resumes like nothing happened. Later, the VM won’t boot — corrupted VMDK.
On macOS with VMware Fusion, a Thunderbolt LaCie acts as a PCIe device. Fusion’s virtual SCSI layer + Apple’s IOKit + LaCie’s Thunderbolt controller firmware = race conditions. One VMware engineer (circa 2018) called it “a three-body problem of drivers.”
Running ESXi on external LaCie drives is common in home labs, but it comes with caveats regarding reliability and formatting.
