Why? VMFS 6 uses a proprietary on-disk layout with features like:
: Create a new virtual machine in VMware Workstation and install a trial version of ESXi. mount vmfs 6 windows hot
(free, no registration required for basic use). mount the entire disk
Now that you have this guide, you can confidently recover data from a live VMFS 6 datastore directly from your Windows workstation – hot, fast, and safely. not the partition.
Summary
VMFS 6 stores metadata in the first 2 MB. If the disk was partitioned with GPT or MBR, the driver may not find the VMFS header. Use a tool like gdisk to set partition type to 0xFB (VMFS). Alternatively, mount the entire disk, not the partition.