Introduction One of the most alarming errors a vSphere administrator can encounter is the “VMFS partition table missing” message on a datastore. This error typically appears in the vSphere Client under the Storage Devices view, or during a rescan of storage adapters. It indicates that ESXi cannot read the partition table on a specific LUN or disk, making the VMFS datastore inaccessible.
Remember: A missing partition table is not the same as a missing VMFS. The file system metadata resides deeper in the disk, and in many cases, your virtual machines are still intact—just waiting for the right recovery approach. Last updated: October 2025. Based on VMware ESXi 6.7, 7.0, and 8.0 behavior.