In the world of virtualization, VMware’s Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is the gold standard for shared datastores. With the release of vSphere 6.5 and later, VMFS 6 became the default file system, offering superior support for large-capacity drives (up to 64 TB) and automatic space reclamation (UNMAP).
Hetman Partition Recovery: Can identify VMFS volumes and extract virtual machine files (VMDKs) after a "Fast Scan". 2. The WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) Workaround
If you have a flat VMDK file or device snapshot, you can open the -flat.vmdk inside 7-Zip, but this does not mount the entire file system. Not recommended for hot volumes.
Step 3: Launch StarWind VMFS Driver
Identify the disk: Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"Note the index number (e.g., \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1). Mount in WSL:wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --bare
Using StarWind V2V Converter (free):