VMWare Virtual Disk Format (VMDK)

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Image types

There are multiple types of VMWare Virtual Disk Format (VMDK) data files:

• 2GbMaxExtentFlat (twoGbMaxExtentFlat); descriptor file (name.vmdk) with RAW data extent files (name-f###.vmdk). This image type is basically a split RAW image.
• 2GbMaxExtentSparse (twoGbMaxExtentSparse); descriptor file (name.vmdk) with VMDK sparse data extent files (name-s###.vmdk)

Descriptor file

The descriptor file defines how and where the data of the VMDK image is stored. The data is stored in extent data files.

Extent file types

There are multiple types extent files:

• RAW data file or device
• VMDK sparse data file
• COWD sparse data file

External Links

• Virtual Disk Format 5.0, by VMWare