Clicking "New Datastore" writes a new VMFS header and partition table, which will overwrite the old one. Once that happens, recovery goes from "moderate" to "forensic excavation."
esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -l YourDatastoreName If that fails, use vmfs6-recover (available in ESXi 7.x+): data recovery vmfs partition
vmfs6-recover /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6000c29... This scans for stale VMFS signatures and can reattach the partition without data loss. If auto-recovery fails, you need to manually recreate the partition table exactly as it was. Clicking "New Datastore" writes a new VMFS header
partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6000c29... Let’s say the disk has 4294967296 sectors. The original VMFS partition likely started at sector 2048 and ended at the last sector minus 1. data recovery vmfs partition
vmkfstools -V Or find the partition device ID:
