# Access files within VMDK image



## FredMack (Sep 20, 2010)

Hi folks,

I currently have a FreeBSD 7.0 server pulling ESX 3.5 Windows server backups to ZFS storage.
This is great for full backups of the VMDK files in case of failure but not so great to access individual files from the VMDK.

I've done a bit of reading to see if there is any way to mount the VMDK files in FreeBSD to access the individual files and the only suggestion I have found is to convert the VMDK to a RAW file format, mount it as a loopback device and go from there.

I'm struggling a bit with the conversion and as the image I'm testing with is 80GB I'm hoping someone out there has done this previously to save me a bit of time with some tips.

I'm happy to provide as much additional info as I can if it helps.

Thanks in advance!


----------



## wblock@ (Sep 20, 2010)

There's a Debian program called vdfuse that can mount VirtualBox disk image files, including VMDK.  I don't know if VirtualBox VMDK files are the same as VMware VMDK files, but the odds are good.

Juergen Lock has a test version of a port of vdfuse.  It may take some debugging.


----------



## FredMack (Sep 20, 2010)

Thankyou! I'll build a smaller vm so I can test it out.


----------

