You might find it easier to mount the ESXi partitions with a live CD. I haven't tried via the install CD or paralell install yet.

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/disabl ... tartup.php

Thanks Dave, I'll give that a try tonight.

All sorted ! Booted off a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, ran fdisk, and was able to mount the ESXi partitions and save my state.tgz file. I saved this onto my USB stick first to test booting off it, and everything apart from my free license details seemed to be as there were. I'm very happy I don't have to create all those resource pools again, there were more of them than I thought as a fair portion of them are nested.

Anyway, did a repair install and saved my state.tgz file onto the disk. I also modified boot.cfg to include state.tgz, but not 100% sure that was required (it was in the original, but not in the clean install on my USB stick). From there rebooted the server on the rebuilt ESXi install, installed my license key and tested my VM's. So far everything is looking good.

Thanks a bundle for your help Dave!

I'm glad to hear you have things sorted out. I was a bit worried from the first post when you mentioned the VMs with photos. Time to go check by own backups.