Regardless of which path you choose, heed these warnings to prevent making a bad situation worse.
✅ You have successfully performed a “hot mount” of VMFS 6 on Windows without disrupting the production VMs.
If you want, I can:
Open Computer Management > Disk Management to find the Disk Number (e.g., Disk 2 ).
How to Access VMFS Datastore from Linux, ESXi host or Windows mount vmfs 6 windows hot
If you have access to the ESXi host, it is safer to enable SSH on the host and use a client like WinSCP to copy files directly from the datastore to a Windows machine.
: The safest method is connecting the storage to an ESXi host, which natively supports VMFS 6, and accessing files through the Datastore Browser Implementation Guide: Mounting via Linux-Bridge Regardless of which path you choose, heed these
If you encounter this error while trying to mount a partition, it means you're using tools that don't support your VMFS version. On Linux, this typically indicates that vmfs-tools (which supports VMFS3 and VMFS5) was installed when vmfs6-tools is needed.
Open the software and locate the raw disk. The tool will parse the VMFS 6 structure. How to Access VMFS Datastore from Linux, ESXi
Use a tool like Paragon VMFS for Windows on the clone .
Before attempting to mount, ensure your environment meets these requirements: