Not able to recognize USB portable disk

[Max37]

Hello,

I am running VirtualBox v4.3.28(with extension pack) on MAC OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 with Windows 7 guest. After installation, I failed to use a portable disk within Win7 guest. I am able to recognize the correct vendor ID/model of the portable disk when creating filter. After that, the Win7 showed me unknown device. Actually I was using the same disk for Win7 guest creation(ISO file) and able to use a Flash disk on the exact same USB interface. I am not sure if it is due to the portable disk was partitioned by MAC fdisk tool.

Thanks for your attention.

Max

[loukingjr]

Windows cannot read hfs+ formatted drives if that's what you mean.

[Max37]

Thanks for the feedback.

The portable disk has three partitions, NFS, FAT32 and hfs+. I supposed Win7 should be able to see two of them.

Max

[loukingjr]

depends. Windows 7 32bit won't. 64bit might.

btw, after you created a filter for the portable drive, did you shutdown the guest, unplug the drive, restart the guest then pug in the drive?

[Max37]

Indeed, I did install Win7 64-bit guest.

Just gave it another try by restarting the guest an plugin the portable disk. Unfortunately, still saw unknown device.

Any further suggestion? I thought this is a very normal requirement to use portable disk.

Thanks.

[loukingjr]

Is the portable drive USB 3.0? Because if it is VirtualBox won't support USB 3.0 until VB 5.0.

If not, apparently it can't read the partition table.

[Max37]

Oops!!! It is USB3.0 device. So I have to wait for VB5.0.

Thanks a lot, anyway.

[Max37]

By the way, when can I expect for the VB5.0?

[mpack]

Only the devs can answer that, and they never do. You'll find out when we do.

[Max37]

Just tried connecting an USB2.0 portable device and it worked fine. Confirmed it is due to USB3.0.

Please hurry up the VB5.0 since USB3.0 is getting dominated the PC market.

[loukingjr]

FYI, you can still access a USB3.0 drive by…
1. Plug it into a USB2.0 port or hub.
2. Use a USB2.0 cable.
3. Make the drive a shared folder.

It won't be long before USB3.1 is more common.

[Max37]

Thanks for sharing the information.

For the first two solutions, it is trivial to downgrade to USB2.0. But I don't quite understand the way of shared folder. Can you advise more.

USB3.1 already showed up on MacBook 2015, but I believe that it will be at least one year later for WinTel PCs in common.

[Max37]

Will VB5.0 support USB3.1 directly?

[loukingjr]

As far as making a drive into a shared folder, you just point to the entire volume instead of a particular folder. See shared folders in the user manual.

As far as the MacBook "USB3.1" port, it's really a "USB3.1 Gen 1" port which means it's really a 5Gbps USB3.0 port. It can't transfer info at 10Gbps as a USB3.1 Gen 2 port will.
Some info

As far as I know there are no plans to support USB3.1 in VB 5.0. There is just no call for it yet.

[mpack]

Adding to what Lou has said...

As far as making a drive into a shared folder, you just point to the entire volume instead of a particular folder.

... but IMHO you would be well advised not to share the root folder on any drive. Share an actual folder.

Returning to the USB question: please bear in mind that the guest OS must also support USB 3.x, otherwise the drive still will not be usable. OTOH, with the shared folder trick you can access any drive which the host can access.