A Hyper-V VM will not boot after a host crash. The VHDX attaches but shows as RAW, or Windows offers to format it. There is important data on that virtual disk. Recovery options?
How to recover data from a corrupt VHD file?
Solved Data Recovery
BA
Barry Allen February 11, 2020
2 replies
6,470 views
Reviewed by moderators
RAW on attach means the file system inside the VHDX got hit, but the data blocks are usually intact.
1
Never let Windows format it. Copy the VHDX file itself somewhere safe first.
2
Attach the VHDX read-only through Disk Management, Attach VHD with the read-only box ticked, so nothing writes to it.
3
Run SysTools VHD Recovery or a general drive recovery tool against the attached virtual disk. It scans past the damaged file system and pulls files out to a real drive.
Read-only attach plus recovery scan got the whole data partition back. VM rebuilt separately. Solved.