Are you troubleshooting I/O errors of local disks ?
If your conclusion is "something obscure happens in the BIOS of the ESXi-host" then maybe this helps:
Understanding ATA Security » ADMIN Magazine
Symptoms may be:
hexdump -C /dev/disks/t10************:1 - fails immediatly with an I/O error
partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/t10******************* fails
dd commands fail at once with I/O errors
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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...