All paid tools listed offer free trials (scan & preview) before purchase. It is strongly recommended to test the trial on a copy of the damaged VMDK to confirm recoverability.
For production VMware environments, acquire DiskInternals VMFS Recovery or R-Studio for VMware as part of your disaster recovery toolkit, combined with a robust backup solution (e.g., Veeam or Nakivo) to reduce reliance on after-the-fact recovery. End of report best vmdk recovery tools
