My problem is mainly due to the inability to to make the changes to esx.conf persist after reboot. So yes, you are correct, I mistakenly enabled passthough for the Intel SATA controller which is where the datastore is attached. So thanks for catching that and for your suggestions. I will remove the red lines as you indicated and we'll see what happens, but before I do that, I am going to try the suggestion you indicated in the other thread How to disable ESXi Passthrough my findings. I had forgotten I created that thread in my desperation to get this fixed. While I have edited the esx.conf endless times and rebooted to no avail, I have not tried editing it offline using a live boot CD which was my intention now trying to get the s.v00 file mounted.
Also, I am not able to use ALT+F1 to get to the ESXi console because all USB ports are set to passthrough and so ESXi is not using them, which means any keyboard I attach to the computer does not work. I am forced to use SSH in that respect. Thanks and I will keep you posted.