I know that Virtualbox needs a harddrive to be offline so that Windows isn't locking it, in order for it to be usable in VBox (as VBox needs raw access to the drive). The thread at
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38914 shows how to do it for a conventional harddrive, and this might even work for a USB plugin harddrive. But a USB thumbdrive is something else. The technique they tell you how to use (using DISKPART take the drive offline) does NOT work for USB thumbdrives. Diskpart displays the following error message when I attempt to do so "The operation is not supported on removable media.". So now I have a real problem. I get the error VERR_ACCESS_DENIED from VBox when trying to use the drive while it's online, but Windows DISKPART won't let me take the drive offline.
The full text of the error is:
Permission problem accessing the file for the medium 'C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Temp\USB8G.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).
Result Code:
VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component:
MediumWrap
Interface:
IMedium {4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda}
Callee:
IVirtualBox {9570b9d5-f1a1-448a-10c5-e12f5285adad}
Callee RC:
VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
Is there a solution to this? I'm about to have a nervous breakdown, as everything I attempt to do to fix this problem, only presents further problems. I'm willing to do basically anything at this point to get it to work, even if it means hacking the Windows registry to take the drive offline.