[McIDAS #DZN-645110]: McIDAS, CentOS, solid-state drive and Windows 10

Hi Kwan,

Thanks for the interesting and useful information on accessing
VMware drives from Windows.  I have not needed to use this kind of
access (I guess I've been lucky), but having a reference to some
software aimed at doing recovery from such a drive should be useful
down the road.  My approach since day 1 has been to write/keep
perishable content on an external HD and then to back that drive
up periodically.  I have been meaning to setup a more robust mechanism
for quite some time, but I have not done the work... yet.

As I understand your situation, you had a number of scripts inside
of your VM which you have lost access to since your disk crash.
This really is a bummer!  Most of the "stuff" that I keep inside
of my VM can be recreated (with some difficulty), so the thing that
really causes me to panic is the thought of losing my external HD
and the information on it.

Cheers,

Tom

> I came across a couple of interesting blogs on this related subject.
> 
> https://www.raymond.cc/blog/access-virtual-hard-disks-easily-in-windows-7/#comments
> https://www.altaro.com/vmware/extract-content-vmdk-files/
> 
> I have tried many of the recommended software.  Only one of them, Linux
> Reader (https://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/features.shtml), came
> real close to finding the scripts that I have been trying to retrieve.  I
> think you would also be interested in checking out this software.  It was
> smart enough to recognize the split vmdk virtual disk files in the CentOS
> directory and mounted them together (Drives -> Mount image -> Containers ->
> *.vmdk -> next -> select CentOS dir.).  It then mounted the virtual disk as
> Disk /1, and I could click on the drive icon and the entire Linux root
> directory structure was shown!  I then found my way into the McIDAS
> directory.  However, for some reason, I could only see a few files and
> directories in there -- but many of them are missing!  I am not sure if
> this was a bug or not.  I would be interested to know if you find the same
> issue or not.  But once I got pass that point, the files could be exported
> easily into Windows.
> 
> I have also tried 7-Zip, PowerISO, and some other software but they failed
> to open the vmdk files.  I was able to mount a vmdk file with OSFMount but
> I did not know what to do to read its contents.  I can also right-click on
> each vmdk file and VMware shows an option which would allow mounting of the
> vmdk file but Windows could not mount it for some reason.
> 
> Kwan
> 
> address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Kwan,
> >
> > er:
> > > I have tried getting into single user mode and emergency modes in the
> > last
> > > hour.  Both failed.  So I guess no luck.
> >
> > I would continue to scour the Internet to see if someone else has
> > gone through the same problem and found a solution; this is
> > the approach that I would take since I have not been in the
> > same position as you.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Tom
> > --
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> > Unidata User Support                                    UCAR Unidata
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> >
> > Ticket Details
> > ===================
> > Ticket ID: DZN-645110
> > Department: Support McIDAS
> > Priority: Normal
> > Status: Closed
> > ===================
> > NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the
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> 
> 

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: DZN-645110
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
===================
NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the Unidata 
inquiry tracking system and then made publicly available through the web.  If 
you do not want to have your interactions made available in this way, you must 
let us know in each email you send to us.