If the datastore does not appear in esxcfg-volume -l , the next step is scanning for VMFS headers:

esxcfg-scsidevs -m partedUtil getptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.XXXXXX From there, you can manually using partedUtil setptbl and the saved VMFS partition layout.

To recover a datastore (e.g., after a partition table loss, accidental deletion, or metadata corruption), a critical piece is: Reattach the datastore via ESXi CLI without reformatting If the datastore is missing but the underlying LUN/disk still contains VMFS signatures: