While primarily a converter, its “Mount VMDK to VMFS” feature also allows read‑only access to raw VMFS disks. Works well for data recovery without writing to the source disk.
For emergency file recovery, this is a 4/5 solution. For regular production use, always access VMFS through ESXi or a Linux VM with vmfs-tools . Never attempt to mount a live datastore – shut down the VM or host first to avoid corruption. Would you like a step‑by‑step guide for a specific tool instead?
If you need to read or recover files from a VMware VMFS disk (common with ESXi hosts) directly in Windows, you’ll quickly discover that Windows does not natively support VMFS. After testing several options, here’s what works reliably:
While primarily a converter, its “Mount VMDK to VMFS” feature also allows read‑only access to raw VMFS disks. Works well for data recovery without writing to the source disk.
For emergency file recovery, this is a 4/5 solution. For regular production use, always access VMFS through ESXi or a Linux VM with vmfs-tools . Never attempt to mount a live datastore – shut down the VM or host first to avoid corruption. Would you like a step‑by‑step guide for a specific tool instead?
If you need to read or recover files from a VMware VMFS disk (common with ESXi hosts) directly in Windows, you’ll quickly discover that Windows does not natively support VMFS. After testing several options, here’s what works reliably: