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
If the server is still running ("Hot") and you just need to access files, do not try to mount the datastore on Windows. Instead, access the datastore from ESXi. mount vmfs 6 windows hot
He brewed coffee and told himself this would be routine: identify the issue, mount the VMFS, restore access. In the elevator, his phone buzzed with the operations team’s messages—“host overheating,” “guest unreachable,” “snapshot tasks failing.” Dante pictured the VMFS volume as a locked warehouse; his job was finding the right key without smashing windows. He brewed coffee and told himself this would
First, he moved noncritical workloads off the host, vMotioning a few low-priority VMs to neighboring blades. The host eased; the CPU dropped from panic to perspiration. Next, Dante checked the storage paths: one path showed errors. Multipathing had flailed and presented the datastore as inaccessible to the Windows host. The datastore itself was healthy—metadata intact—but the host’s view was corrupted. The host eased; the CPU dropped from panic to perspiration