vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/VMname/VMname.vmdk
When you delete a file in a standard Windows (NTFS) or Linux (ext4) filesystem, the file system marks the inode/MFT entry as deleted but often leaves the filename and metadata intact until overwritten. recover deleted vmdk file from vmfs datastore
If you see a flat file but no descriptor file, you can recreate the descriptor using vmkfstools -d thin -c [Size] [Filename].vmdk and associating it with the existing flat file, but this is a manual reconstruction, not a recovery of a truly deleted file. vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/VMname/VMname