Full definition
A typical VMDK on ESXi 6+ consists of 2 files: the descriptor (text, ~1KB) and the flat data file (.flat.vmdk, holding raw disk data). Variants include thin provisioning (grows on demand), thick eager-zeroed (pre-allocates and zeros) and snapshots in a chain (-000001.vmdk pointing to parent). Linux-ESXi ransomware (BlackCat, LockBit, Akira) typically encrypts only the first megabytes of the flat data file, destroying the internal VMFS header. In cases where the header is destroyed but the rest is intact, recovery involves identifying the internal partition and extracting files without normally mounting the VMDK.
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