What is a .VMDK file?
VMDK is VMware’s virtual hard disk format. Created and opened by VMware.
- Did you know
- VMDK is the virtual-disk format of VMware, the company that popularised x86 virtualisation.
- A VMDK can consist of a small text descriptor plus one or more data extents, each markable as read-write, read-only or no-access.
- VMware opened the VMDK specification with revision 5.0 in 2011, and it is one of the disk formats used inside the Open Virtualization Format.
- What Analyser reads
- Open raw disk images (IMG, IMA, DSK) like a folder - Analyser mounts the FAT12/16/32 filesystem, whether a bare SD card / USB / floppy image or an MBR-partitioned disk, and lists every file in a browsable tree and treemap so you can click any one to analyse it, reading the volume label, cluster size and free space along the way; it also carves every image out of the raw sectors, recovering deleted and orphaned photos the directory no longer lists. It identifies virtual-machine and optical images (VHD/VHDX Hyper-V, VMDK VMware, QCOW2 QEMU, VDI VirtualBox, ISO) and shows the partition table; non-FAT filesystems (ISO 9660, ext2/3/4, NTFS, exFAT) are identified but not yet browsed. Compressed backups (IMC - Runtime Software / GetDataBack; ADI - Active@ Disk Image / AOMEI Backupper) are identified with their label and details; convert them to a raw .img in the tool that made them to browse and carve them.
- Depth of analysis
- .VMDK is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .VMDK file
- Drag a .VMDK file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.