While FUSE is native to Linux, Windows ports (such as or Dokan ) allow for user-mode file systems.
I’ll focus on the first method because it’s most practical for sysadmins.
Open Disk Management ( diskmgmt.msc ). Locate your VMFS drive and note its physical disk number (e.g., Disk 1).
For quick, safe, and free access: (part of their V2V converter) is my go-to. It turns a 10-minute headache into a 2-minute job.
Tools like the (often associated with the vmfs-tools package) have been ported to Java, allowing them to run on Windows.
VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is proprietary to VMware. Windows can’t read it natively. But with the right tools, you can mount, browse, and copy data from VMFS drives directly on Windows.
