In the next window, assign a drive letter to the virtual disk, then open it in File Explorer to copy files normally as you would do on physical disks. If you have either of these installed on your PC, you could skip using the 7-Zip tool and use either of them it's still pretty easy and fast.įor this method, you have to find the virtual disk file in Explorer, right-click on it, and select "Map Virtual Disk" from the menu options. The free tool explained above might seem the best option for most people, especially those who don't have VMware Workstation Player or Workstation Pro installed. Using VMWare Workstation Player or Workstation Pro This will launch the 7-Zip program and automatically import the content of the VMDK file.Ģ.Locate the VMDK file on your system and right-click on it.However, here's a guide to help you through. 7-zip is available from the developer’s website as an open-source program for unraveling compressed and archived files.ĭownload the most suitable 7-Zip extractor version for your Windows version (32-bit or 64-bit), install it on your computer, and run it upload the VMDK file into the program's interface and extract the files you want to access. Using 7-Zip, you can extract VMDK files without running VMWare Workstation. It supports multiple archive formats, including VMDK. Use File Extractors (7-Zip)ħ-Zip is one of the best file extractor tools available to Windows OS PC users. Yes, you can extract VMDK files for free on Windows OS using archive extractor software apps or Windows built-in extractor utility. Can You Extract Files From a VMware Disk Image on Windows for Free? On the flip side, if the Live DVD has Linux, it can't read NTFS and FAT32 partitions. Notwithstanding, you should note that the OS in the Live DVD must recognize the file systems of the virtual disk partitions you want to access.įor example, if the Live DVD has Windows OS, it won't recognize Linux partitions formatted as EXT3/4, ReiserFS, and others. Most people use this method to extract data from VMDK disks on virtual machines running on VMware Player/Workstation or VMware ESXi or and it is called the Legacy Method. Some Live DVDs mount disks/partitions automatically. You can also mount partitions and copy files. The ISO would serve as the disc inserted into a virtual DVD drive of the VM then, you can boot into an OS in the DVD media. But, to run this method, you must install VMware Workstation, ESXi, VMware Player or Oracle VirtualBox on your computer system.įor this method, you must have a live virtual machine and a bootable DVD. In fact, this is the simplest way of opening VMDK files - hassle-free. Yes, it is possible to open VMDK files using an existing virtual machine. VMDK is similar to VHD (Microsoft's Virtual Disk Image container) and HDD (a disk image format created for macOS virtual machines). VMDK files can also be referred to as VDIs (Virtual Disk Images). Put simply, VMDK files are an image of a VirtualBox/VMware virtual hard disk containing information about virtual machines. As a plain text file, you can view the descriptor using a Text Editor. What's a virtual disk descriptor? It is plain text that contains the structure of the virtual disk, virtual hardware version, virtual disk geometry, and IDs. In contrast, on VMware Workstations, a virtual disk is represented as a monolithic sparse (diskname.vmdk) with the disk descriptor embedded inside. Notwithstanding, virtual machines hosted on ESXi servers use a different VMDK format that contains the virtual disk descriptor (diskname.vmdk) and raw data (diskname-flat.vmdk) as two separate files on the datastore. vmdk extension the VMDK format is used by VirtualBox and VMware virtual machines. VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk File) is a file format by VMware for storing important information regarding the virtual machines deployed in VMware environments. How Is VMware Data Stored in VMDK Format?
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