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Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 11. Apr 2010, 14:46
by walts
I just did a new install of Virtual Box 3.1.6 and built a VM with XP service pack 3. The host is a MacBook Pro running 10.6.3, and has never had VB installed before. I do have VMWare Fusion installed, and the USB drives work fine with it. (I'm not running both hypervisors at the same time!)

I get the same symptoms as those above have described. I make sure the Guest window is active and plug in the device. The camera, IR and Bluetooth are active, and the USB drive and the keyboard are grayed out. Ejecting the device from the Mac desktop and reinserting it has no effect.

The devices DO work in VMWare.

Walt

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 11. Apr 2010, 23:59
by ChipMcK
Give this a try in the OS X Terminal application

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vboxmanage usbfilter add 0 --target global --name "MyDisk599GB" --action hold --active yes  --vendorid 0x9999  --productid 0x1100  --serialnumber "9876543210123456789" 
To complete the command with your configuration, you will need the output from

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vboxmanage list usbhost
These commands are listed in the user's guide

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 15. Apr 2010, 11:22
by Schprocket
ChipMcK wrote:...

I do notice that an USB external hard drive needs to be ejected from OS X
and then unplugged and plugged in for the VM to capture the drive.
I prefer the processing for USB stick drives - easier to understand/use.
...
I'm running XP SP3 inside VirtualBox 3.1.6r5931 on a MacBookPro (the last one with the DVI video and the FW400 and FW800 ports) with OSX 10.5.8 installed.

Chip's tip (eject the USB drive in OSX) worked for me for a regular USB flash drive but I did not unplug the device - almost as soon as it disappeared from the OSX desktop, VB's USB symbol started flashing like mad then XP proceeded to install the flash drive.

A 'reboot' of the VM and all was good. Ejecting from the XP VM does not seem to make OSX re-read the device and it may be removed from the computer.

Refitting the USB drive without shutting down the XP VM allows it to take direct control of the drive without OSX 'seeing' it.
No dramas with file reading or writing in either direction from USB to "C: drive".

With the drive removed, turning XP vm off and restarting it, then physically attaching the USB stick, and we're back to OSX 'snatching' the drive first.
With the drive left in place, turn the XP vm off, and OSX gains control of the flash drive again until it's logically ejected again in OSX.


However VirtualBox isn't recognising my Welland SATA dock (with 1Tb WD fitted) via the eSATA connection (probably because I haven't installed any drivers in XP, maybe?) but when connected via USB, I could now see the drive, but it remains greyed-out after being unmounted in OSX.
I'll have to work on this one a little more...

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 20. Apr 2010, 17:41
by gmgodwin
I've been trying for a week to get my virtual machine to recognize a USB flash drive. My host OS is Mac OS X 10.6.3, and I installed the latest version of VirtualBox (3.1.6) last week to run Windows XP Pro SP3. I tried several different flash drives last week, but to no avail. Finally, I uninstalled VirtualBox and started all over again. This time, I elected to format the virtual hard drive in the FAT32 system rather than the default. I then installed Windows XP Pro and downloaded all of the updates to get to the most recent version (SP3). Yesterday, I was able to select my USB drive (a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer) from the pop-up menu on the USB icon in the VM window (not from within Windows itself, but from VirtualBox). Windows, however, wouldn't recognize the drive. After some digging around this morning, I discovered that there were no installed drivers for the USB port in Windows. Here's how I solved that problem:

- Open My Computer.
- Click View System Information.
- Go to the Hardware tab.
- Open the Device Manager.
- Under the Other Devices header, right-click on the USB Controller item (I can't remember exactly what it's called).
- Click Properties.
- From there, you should be able to troubleshoot your USB port, and it will tell you whether your drivers are installed. Just follow the prompts to install the driver.

As soon as I installed the driver, Windows was able to load the USB drive. Well, that is, as soon as I ejected it from Mac OS X. If Mac OS X grabs the drive before Windows does, then just eject it from the Finder (or, in my case, Path Finder), but do not remove it from the USB port. Once Mac OS X releases it, Windows will grab it and load it. It should be smooth sailing from there.

I hope that helps.

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 20. Apr 2010, 18:18
by ChipMcK
Yes, that is how USB flash/stick drives work.

Unfortunately, that is not how my USB external hard drives work.
I need a global USB filter and replug the hard drive once the guest is active. See previous posts in the thread.

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 17. Jun 2010, 15:38
by yeuwen
After ejecting my USB thumb drive, I was able to select it from WinXP guest OS via bottom right usb icon. However, after a while, my drive re-appear on my Max OS desktop. And now, the list of usb devices from within WinXP is "<no devices available>".

What have I missed?

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 15. Jul 2010, 00:49
by iii
Not sure whom suggested in this blog, but as it has been useful for me [macbook pro, installed VirtualBox for Windows XP but I could not access my flash driver: the name was there but not active]:
- it was selected in finder, I, as suggested, 'removed' it without taking it away from the computer. Once it was deactivated from finder, after a little bit it was recognised in Virtual box and than Windows. I have to add that once it was recognised in Virtual Box I went back to the Devise Management in WindowsXP and not if this last part triggert the final popping up in WindowsXP, but finally I managed to access the files I needed to download for a work with a softwar that does not run in mac but only WindowsXP [NVivo]

THANKS for all the hints (some did not work, but at least I felt I wasn't alone... and I have learn much more than I knew few hours ago :D )

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 18. Jul 2010, 16:17
by jren57
Please check that the external drives are FAT32 or NTFS as the the Windows OS *CANNOT* read or write Mac OS X native HFS(+) volumes.
My dad also had this problem with Bootcamp and Vista, because he didn't realize that Windows cannot read Mac formatted external disks and are ignored!

You may need to use third-party software such as HFSExplorer in Windows to read Mac Disks.

Re: Cannot open USB external Hard Disk

Posted: 19. Jul 2010, 18:50
by cygnine
I'm new to the thread, and having trouble mounting a USB external drive. I'm running an OSX 10.6.4 host with VB 3.2.6, the guest is Ubuntu 10.04, I've installed the guest additions. My external device is an ext3-formatted hard drive. Here is the error I'm getting when clicking on the hard drive from VB's list of USB devices:

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Failed to attach the USB device [b]Unknown device[/b] to the virtual machine. 

Argument ald is invalid (must be Guid(ald).isEmpty() == false).

Details:

Callee RC:          NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Any help/suggestions are appreciated. To perhaps head off some suggestions, I've included some hairy details below.

- my OSX host has read-capability for ext3 drives, so I don't think it's an issue of OSX's particular behavior for a non-natively supported filesystem. In addition, I've tried the same with an external drive that has two partitions, one ext3 and the other FAT32. The same error pops up. Admittedly, I haven't tried this with e.g. a FAT32-only drive.
- Once the above quoted error comes up, the guest OS seems to behave as normal. However, the VB guest application window on the host does not respond well: the GUI items that pop up the list of e.g. CD devices and USB devices does not respond and nothing happens when I click on the icons. Additionally, in the host application going to Devices -> Network Adapters brings up a dialog box that is entirely empty, save for OK+Cancel buttons (instead it should list the network adapters I've set up for the guest). Going to Machine -> Session Information Dialog, the information there states that everything is disconnected, e.g. there are no network adapters. Nevertheless, the guest OS can access the internet after the NS_ERROR_FAILURE junk. If I close the Session Information Dialog and then try to reopen it, the guest application window crashes. If instead I just shut down the guest OS, the main VB application window does not respond well either -- I have to completely quit and restart VB in order to get things back to normal. None of these shenanigans happen if I make no attempts to mount USB drives.
- I have a USB filter set up for any device I attempt to mount. I've tried ChipMcK's method of using the host terminal to specify the USB device -- vboxmanage actually barfs back an error about me not supplying all the `Mandatory options'. I can't seem to figure out what it means since the command I enter conforms to the usage it specifies. Anyway, I just use the VB application GUI to do it, and it seems to recognize everything, serial numbers and all, as my terminal command would say.
- My device is not hiding behind any USB hubs