If you are facing a high-stakes disaster recovery scenario, utilizing a dedicated commercial tool like or DiskInternals is highly recommended for speed and safety. If you are experimenting in a homelab or testing environments, the WSL 2 route provides an excellent, cost-free alternative.
For safe read/write, the volume must be unmounted from all ESXi hosts first, unless using a read-only or coordinated cluster filesystem (not standard VMFS).
Since native tools are not an option, you must use software engineered to parse the VMFS 6 file structure. These tools generally fall into two categories: read-only mounters and data recovery suites. Method 1: Diskinternals VMFS Recovery (Recommended) mount vmfs 6 windows hot
: Inside the Linux terminal, compile or install the latest repository versions of vmfs-tools that support VMFS 6.
If you prefer an open-source or cost-effective route, you can leverage a Linux environment. While native Linux kernels also do not write to VMFS 6 perfectly, tools like vmfs-tools (via packages or compiled source) can read VMFS volumes. You can run Linux inside Windows using VMware Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox. If you are facing a high-stakes disaster recovery
To help narrow down the best path for your environment, please let me know:
VMFS 6 introduced significant metadata changes from version 5, including and automatic space reclamation (UNMAP) . These changes make version 6 incompatible with many older "VMFS-tools" drivers originally built for VMFS 3 or 5. Max Capacity Block Size 1 MB (Unified) 4K Native Support Space Reclamation Automatic (Hot) Important Precautions Since native tools are not an option, you
– this is key.