best practices for setting up a file server data HDD

I'm fairly new to VMWare ESXi and have been setting up a Dell T20 as a test machine. I'm setting up a VM for a Windows file server and was wondering what the best practices for setting up a data storage hard drive.

Can I directly access a partitioned HDD?

Or Do I set up the HDD as a RDM or virtual disk?

Or something else?

Again, I'm new to this, so any help is appreciated.