Identify virtual disk format types

ESX currently supports 10 unique disk formats.

-zeroedthick - This is the default format when creating a new virtual disk. The space is allocated durng the disk creation but is not zeroed out until the first write from the virtual machine.
-eagerzeroedthick – Same as the above, except the disk is zeroed during the creation process. SInce it does the zeroing at creation this takes longer to create. (Obviously)
-thick – The space is allocated during the creation, but does noto zero out any of the data. This type cannot be created by non-root users.
-thin – The required space is NOT allocated durng the creation, but is allocated and zeroed on demand
-rdm – Virtual compatibility mode for raw disk mapping
-rdmp – Physical compatibility mode for raw disk mapping (pass-through mode)
-raw – Raw device
-2gbsparse – the virtual disk is broken up into a series os files, none of which are larger then 2 GigaBytes in size. You cannot power this format up until you use vmkfstools to reimport it to a compatible format.
-monosparse – monolithic sparse disk
-monoflat – monolithic flat disk

Data obtained from VMware KB 1022242