Even with UFS Explorer’s write mode, VMware strongly recommends against it. One misaligned write can corrupt the file system’s heartbeat region, causing all VMs to fail.
The ability to mount datastores natively in Windows is virtually non-existent because Windows does not recognize the proprietary VMware file system. While legacy tools like the Open Source VMFS Driver supported older versions (VMFS 3), modern environments require specialized third-party software or virtualized workarounds to access files without reformatting. 1. Professional Software Solutions mount vmfs 6 windows hot
Since the popular "Open Source VMFS Driver" (Java-based) typically only supports up to VMFS 3/5, Windows users often use WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to run Linux-native tools. Even with UFS Explorer’s write mode, VMware strongly
Enable read/write access to a volume from a Windows environment while the datastore remains online (“hot”) on a live VMware ESXi host. While legacy tools like the Open Source VMFS