She fired up diskmgmt.msc . The 4TB LUN appeared as "Unknown, Not Initialized." Windows saw only a blob of unallocated space. But Maya knew better. Using a hex viewer, she spotted the signature: 0x4d 0x44 —the VMFS heartbeat.
For newer partitions, dedicated recovery software is more reliable and often provides a user-friendly GUI.
A new drive letter appeared: . Windows Explorer opened. Empty. Of course—Windows couldn't parse the VMFS layout. But her carving tool, FTK Imager , could.