If you are dealing with an older partition (common in ESXi versions before 5.0), you can use a Java-based open-source driver. Note that this driver has not been updated since 2010 and does not support VMFS 5 or 6.
: Identify your disk number (e.g., Disk 1) in Windows Disk Management . This is referred to by the driver as \\.\PhysicalDrive1 . mount vmfs windows 10
Enable Windows 10 to mount a VMware VMFS datastore (VMFS5, VMFS6) from a physical disk (local or SAN) and allow access to virtual machine files (VMDKs, VMX logs, etc.) without needing a vSphere environment. If you are dealing with an older partition
If you have extracted a hard drive from an ESXi server or have a raw .vmdk file you need to inspect, you will quickly run into a wall: Windows 10 cannot natively read VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) partitions. This is referred to by the driver as \\