For true "I deleted the VMDK and emptied the trash" scenarios, specialized VM recovery software is your best bet. These tools scan the raw VMFS datastore partition for file signatures.
Few things strike fear into the heart of a VMware administrator like the realization that a critical file has been deleted from a datastore. Whether it was a mistyped rm command, an overzealous cleanup script, or an accidental click in the vSphere Client, the result is the same: a virtual machine that refuses to start. recover deleted vmdk file from datastore