If you have a drive from a failed ESXi host or a damaged datastore and need to pull specific VMs off it, this is the safest route.
There are free tools like , but they typically only allow file preview (1 MB limit) or require you to copy entire VMDKs to a different drive. They do not mount the volume as a live drive. windows read vmfs partition
Since Windows does not natively support VMFS, the most robust "free" method is to bypass Windows temporarily. If you have a drive from a failed