{"id":9,"date":"2025-03-30T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elevatebits.com\/blog\/?p=9"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:07:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:07:00","slug":"how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"How to recover Vmware ESXi from corrupted thumb drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of our ESXi hosts recently didn&#8217;t survive a reboot &#8211; the thumb drive got corrupted. Of course, we didn&#8217;t have a working backup. The thumb drive couldn&#8217;t be copied because some files weren&#8217;t readable. The idea was to do a fresh ESXi install and then just copy the old configuration. However, it wasn&#8217;t clear where that configuration was stored. After some research, I found a file state.tgz, which stores the configuration. I was able to copy that file successfully, replace the original file in fresh install and everything worked!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of our ESXi hosts recently didn&#8217;t survive a reboot &#8211; the thumb drive got corrupted. Of course, we didn&#8217;t have a working backup. The thumb drive couldn&#8217;t be copied because some files weren&#8217;t readable. The idea was to do a fresh ESXi install and then just copy the old configuration. However, it wasn&#8217;t clear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to recover Vmware ESXi from corrupted thumb drive - ElevateBits Blog &amp; News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to recover Vmware ESXi from corrupted thumb drive - ElevateBits Blog &amp; News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of our ESXi hosts recently didn&#8217;t survive a reboot &#8211; the thumb drive got corrupted. Of course, we didn&#8217;t have a working backup. The thumb drive couldn&#8217;t be copied because some files weren&#8217;t readable. The idea was to do a fresh ESXi install and then just copy the old configuration. However, it wasn&#8217;t clear [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ElevateBits Blog &amp; News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-03-30T18:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-19T14:07:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/esxi-issue-article-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"450\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Slavisa Dojcinovic\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Slavisa Dojcinovic\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Slavisa Dojcinovic\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/#\/schema\/person\/b4d874fed273e7681a4ac2315c905edb\"},\"headline\":\"How to recover Vmware ESXi from corrupted thumb drive\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-03-30T18:04:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-09-19T14:07:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\"},\"wordCount\":105,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/esxi-issue-article-1.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Articles\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/elevatebits.com\/eb\/how-to-recover-vmware-esxi-from-corrupted-thumb-drive\/\",\"name\":\"How to recover Vmware ESXi from corrupted thumb drive - ElevateBits Blog &amp; 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