Default datastore1 has disappeared on ESXi 5.1 installation [closed]

Question

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

We don’t allow questions about professional server or networking-related infrastructure administration on Stack Overflow. You can edit the question so it’s on-topic for Stack Overflow.

Closed 8 years ago.

Improve this question

Prior to a motherboard issue, I removed the SSD drive containing ESXi which also had a smallish datastore1 housed directly on it. When I placed it in another computer, ESXi boots up fine, but datastore1 is nowhere to be found, and I have lost all my VMs which contained important VMs that I used for development, including a blog (which I am not too oncerned about, but nonetheless, have lost the last few months of posts).

Is there a way to recover datastore1? Or any troubleshooting techniques? I am also note sure what kind of FS is used by ESXi, so running a tool like dd_rescue may not help either if it can't recognise the FS.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Ensure that ESXi is attached to a disk controller that is recognized, or it may not see all of the partitions. The kicker is that it will boot, but not see anything other than the boot partition.

Answer 2

ESXi will create VMFS file system for datastores.

was that disk is reported under devices ?

did you try rescan for new datastores from vSphere UI ?

then try to add a new datastore on that device, check whether it is prompted for new signature like question ? (dont run completely , just check whether it is asking or not)