how to add an external hdd?

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OccsE
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Joined: 2. Apr 2021, 10:47

how to add an external hdd?

Post by OccsE »

How to add an external hdd?
I have a hardrive that I should add to see in a virtual win7 created by virtualbox?
mpack
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by mpack »

See the Shared Folders part of the VM settings. Note however that sharing the root folder of any drive is nearly always a bad idea. It would be better to reserve a particular folder on that drive for the VM to access.

This is not a "Windows Guests" question: the question asked does not care what the guest OS is. Topic moved to "Using VirtualBox".
OccsE
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by OccsE »

But maybe the problem is not clear...

So the task to be solved would be to make a disk that has a corrupted windows 10 install on drive C. Therefore, windovs 10 runs from another hdd.
However, the hdd in question is a 3TB. And I don't see the top 1TB. And probably not because the 3TB + program doesn't run under win10 ...
scottgus1
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by scottgus1 »

It appears to me that you have a 3TB hard drive with a failed Windows 10 OS on it. And you want this 3TB drive to appear inside a Windows 7 VM.

Is this an accurate interpretation?

What is your physical computer's OS?
OccsE
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Joined: 2. Apr 2021, 10:47

Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by OccsE »

That's exactly what I want!

Currently, a win10 is running on a 150GB laptop hard drive. And this is the main system.
And the crashed win10 ran on the 3 TB disk.

And all this is because only one program works under win7 with which I could make the top 1 TB of the 3TB disk visible ....
Because unfortunately my motherboard does not handle the part above 2 TB
mpack
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by mpack »

First of all, in direct answer to your original question, it is never a normal thing to attach physical hardware to a virtual machine. Yes there are ways to attach physical drives, but it requires expert knowledge and there are many dangerous pitfalls, I would not recommend that you even try it.

The best solution is to image the drive using Disk2VHD or a similar tool, i.e. convert it to a virtual image. The virtual windows image can then be mounted in any VM whose guest OS supports NTFS.
JustinH
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by JustinH »

mpack wrote:Note however that sharing the root folder of any drive is nearly always a bad idea. It would be better to reserve a particular folder on that drive for the VM to access.
Why is sharing the root of a drive a bad idea? What problems occur?
scottgus1
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by scottgus1 »

JustinH, that's a good question for a web-search, as it's common advice for computers in general, not just in Virtualbox.
OccsE
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by OccsE »

oh no one has any idea to solve the problem?
scottgus1
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Re: how to add an external hdd?

Post by scottgus1 »

mpack wrote:The best solution is to image the drive using Disk2VHD or a similar tool, i.e. convert it to a virtual image. The virtual windows image can then be mounted in any VM whose guest OS supports NTFS.
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