sudo mkdir /mnt/vmfs sudo vmfs-fuse /dev/sdb2 /mnt/vmfs -o ro After mounting, you’ll see a standard VMFS directory structure:
/mnt/vmfs/ ├── .fdc.sf/ ├── .sdd.sf/ └── <datastore_name>/ ├── .vSphere-HA/ ├── <vm_folder>/ │ ├── .vmdk, .vmx, .vmsd, etc. └── ... Use standard cp , rsync , or dd to recover data: vmfs-tools
1. Introduction VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is a clustered block-based file system developed by VMware for storing virtual machine disks, snapshots, and configuration files. By default, Windows and standard Linux distributions cannot mount or read VMFS volumes. sudo mkdir /mnt/vmfs sudo vmfs-fuse /dev/sdb2 /mnt/vmfs -o
/dev/sdb1 Linux swap /dev/sdb2 VMFS (0xFB) sudo vmfsfsck /dev/sdb2 Step 3: Mount Using vmfs-fuse Create a mount point and mount read-only: Introduction VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is a
| Command | Purpose | |---------|---------| | vmfs-fuse | Mount a VMFS partition via FUSE (user-space) for read-only access | | vmfsfsck | Check and validate VMFS filesystem metadata (read-only) | | vmfsrestore | Experimental tool to copy files from VMFS to another location | Step 1: Identify the VMFS Partition Use lsblk or fdisk to find the correct partition (type 0xFB for VMFS).