{"id":353,"date":"2012-10-25T10:43:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T15:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/?p=353"},"modified":"2012-10-25T10:43:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T15:43:37","slug":"access-a-vmfs-drive-under-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/?p=353","title":{"rendered":"Access a VMFS drive under windows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a procedure how to access\u00a0a hard drive formatted in VMWare&#8217;s VMFS file system from Windows. This could be handy if an ESXi host crashes, if a hard drive fails or for digital forensics.<\/p>\n<div>1- Download VMFS driver :\u00a0<a title=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/vmfs\/\" href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/vmfs\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/vmfs\/<\/a><\/div>\n<div>2- Unzip it to a path-friendly location (C:\\vmfs)<\/div>\n<div>3- Make sure java.exe is in your PATH environment variable, if not, add it.<\/div>\n<div>4- Test-run fvmfs.jar by typing in administrator command prompt:<\/div>\n<pre>cd \\vmfs\njava -jar fvmfs.jar<\/pre>\n<p>5- Connect the external drive to your computer and check its disk number in Windows Disk Management. Disk 1 will be named \\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 in vmfs<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery1.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-355\" title=\"vmfs_recovery1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"715\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>6- Check if we can access the disk<\/p>\n<pre>java -jar fvmfs.jar \u00a0\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 info<\/pre>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-356\" title=\"vmfs_recovery2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"677\" height=\"246\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>7- Share using webdav<\/p>\n<pre>java -jar fvmfs.jar \\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 webdav<\/pre>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-357\" title=\"vmfs_recovery3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"677\" height=\"138\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>8- Make sure the webclient service is running<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-358\" title=\"vmfs_recovery4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"790\" height=\"479\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>9- Mount the drive<\/p>\n<pre>net use * http:\/\/localhost:50080\/vmfs<\/pre>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery5.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-359\" title=\"vmfs_recovery5\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"677\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>10- Your drive should now be mounted as a standard windows drive.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-360\" title=\"vmfs_recovery6\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ryanbelanger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/vmfs_recovery6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1108\" height=\"627\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This driver gives you read-only access to the file system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a procedure how to access\u00a0a hard drive formatted in VMWare&#8217;s VMFS file system from Windows. This could be handy if an ESXi host crashes, if a hard drive fails or for digital forensics. 1- Download VMFS driver :\u00a0http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/vmfs\/ 2- Unzip it to a path-friendly location (C:\\vmfs) 3- Make sure java.exe is in your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ryanbelanger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}