Virtual USB memory stick drive

[Mr.Bean]

Some programs specially require USB drive to play with, so it would be really handy for Virtual Box to have ability to create a virtual USB drive.

[mpack]

I assume you have no idea what that would involve! Anyway, what program requires a USB drive? I.e. requires that a mass storage device be attached to a specific host bus?

[michaln]

Some programs specially require USB drive to play with, so it would be really handy for Virtual Box to have ability to create a virtual USB drive.

If you mean something other than the virtual USB drives that VirtualBox 5.0 can create (either "hard disks" or CD-ROMs), you'll have to be a lot more specific...

[djplayer]

I'd like to install a guest OS in a VM.

The installer for the guest OS works from a USB stick.
For example, this one:
http://www.android-x86.org/releases/releasenote-6-0-r1

So I'd like to download the USB Stick image, and build that into a "Virtual USB Stick" and then mount it into the VM and boot from it.

Specific enough?
Has this been supported in the last year since the original post?

Thanks a bunch,
dj

[socratis]

Has this been supported in the last year since the original post?

Booting from a USB stick, no. Creating a USB controller so that the VM sees a USB stick, yes, since version 5.0.0. See Chapter 5.1 of the User Manual.

[ChipMcK]

.. .. .. I'd like to download the USB Stick image, and build that into a "Virtual USB Stick" and then mount it into the VM and boot from it. .. .. ..

There is nothing special about an USB Stick Image; it is still just a disk image.
Restore it to a virtual hard drive, a .vdi fiie, after mounting that virtual hard drive on your host OS. After the restoration and unmounting of that virtual hard drive, you may boot in a virtual machine if the image was build as bootable.

[socratis]

There is nothing special about an USB Stick Image; it is still just a disk image.
Restore it to a virtual hard drive, a .vdi fiie, after mounting that virtual hard drive on your host OS.

How would you do that exactly?

[ChipMcK]

How would you do that exactly?

1. If needed, Install drivers for the target file system, NTFS-3G, e2fsprogs, etc.
2. Read Virtual Disk Mounting tools

[djplayer]

If it's that easy, then how about we put an intern on it and get a menu item so we can point to a USB image and boom... Mounted.
After all, I can mount up a ISO image without downloading any tools. Just pull a menu, browse for the ISO and voila - a mounted DVD.
How about we get the same thing for a USB image?

[mpack]

"we"? I wasn't aware that "we" were contributing anything to development.

The ISO is an irrelevant comparison. The host doesn't fight us for ownership of an ISO, as it does for a USB device. Mounting an ISO doesn't risk data loss because the host was already using it.

[djplayer]

I was trying to encourage what appears to be a simple and very useful new feature, esp in the light of most new installations occurring from USB sticks rather than DVDs. Windows 10 now comes on Stick rather than DVD. Many new systems don't even have a optical media. I don't really understand your argument about "Fight us for ownership". If a USB device is built directly on the Virtual USB bus, then the host would not even know about it to fight about it. And in addition when a real stick is switched from the real USB bus to the Virtual USB Bus in the current implementation, the host is not fighting for it any longer. The Dismount of an Active USB device problem must already be solved in the current implementation. When I plug a stick in, Windows Grabs it and mounts it. And when I switch it to the VM, windows must be sent a message to dismount it, since windows no longer sees it. If I write stuff to it and then switch it, things work cleanly. Looks to me as if all those problems you bring up are already solved.

dj

[mpack]

The point is that we don't hire interns. If you want to hire an intern, do this work and then contribute it to the project then I'm sure the devs would be appreciative.

[djplayer]

Nice one... Change the discussion to a matter of HR rather than software design. Sorry I don't know the internals of your HR. And you are saying also that as popular as this product is there are not enough folks working on it to consider a minor enhancement that is actually visible? That's surprising. I've been using VBox for a long time - many years. And I'm a retired software engineer. Over the years that I've used this product I don't recall seeing any major changes. Perhaps the changes that have come practically on a bi-weekly basis were very difficult under-the-hood stuff that I can't really appreciate since I don't know the internals. That's cool. I'm not in a position to criticize and I'm not doing that. I will say that I have been happy with the performance, functions and reliability of Vbox. I'm just suggesting that this feature we are discussing - back to the feature and away from my mistaken HR comments - would be interesting for me, and based on the flow of progress in the world of installation, would probably be interesting for at least a large percentage of other folks using this product.

I am very sorry for using the word "intern" and derailing the conversation away from the discussion of apparent difficulty and efficacy of the software feature that we were discussing. And based on the age of the original post, have been discussing for some time.

Please consider me "Shut down" on this subject since my point has been made. Sorry for ruffling feathers in the process.

dj

[Martin]

Please realize that this is a forum from users for users, just sponsored/operated by Oracle.
You are writing to other Vbox users, not to Oracle employees/officials.

[yao]

There's some app require a USB flash stick, not USB HDD to work. I have a app run from usb stick, when start it will scan Drives and call win32api GetDriveType, the usb HDD will return Fixed, but USB flash stick will return Removable, So that app can not work when I attach a vdi to USB controller. I'd like vbox have a flag to set USB Mass storage device as Fixed or Removable.