CD/DVD problem

[Ron Weasley]

I wonder if anyone can help?

I am using a Pioneer BDR-XD04T external USB blu ray/dvd/cd drive, attached to a 2011 Mac Mini. The drive works perfectly with the Mini in both OS X and Bootcamp. I want to make the drive accessible to a Windows 7 guest running in VirtualBox.

I have added a new CD/DVD drive under Setting>Storage and then either IDE or SATA controllers. However when I click on the little CD image on the right (to choose either a physical device or virtual image), the Pioneer drive is not there. So I cannot select it, nor select Passthrough mode. If I leave it empty, I can't mount it at run time either.

I have an old Samsung USB drive, and that *does* show up and I can select it and tick passthrough. Does anyone have any idea why VirtualBox cannot see my Pioneer drive?

As an alternative approach I tried adding the drive under USB as a new USB filter. When I start the Windows VM it finds the drive and all seems to be well, but then it fails to install the correct driver and the device doesn't work. (It shows as a yellow exclamation mark "unknown device" in Device Manager.) Maybe if I knew how to install the right driver for it, this might be a fix? But I don't know where the VirtualBox drivers are to be found in the running VM?

[mpack]

Maybe if I knew how to install the right driver for it, this might be a fix? But I don't know where the VirtualBox drivers are to be found in the running VM?

You gave the guest direct access (via USB) to a non-virtual device, so you won't find a VirtualBox driver for it. If a Win7 driver exists then you would need to find it on the drive manufacturers website, and install it in the guest. They should provide details of how.

As to accessing it as a host drive: I have seen previous reports of removable CD/DVD drives not showing up in the list on Mac hosts, but I'm not aware of any resolution. I imagine that VirtualBox asks the host to enumerate optical drives, and isn't told about this one. You can try searching for and adding your name to a BugTracker ticket, if it exists, otherwise there isn't a lot that can be done AFAIK.

* BugTracker is a separate system, although you can use the same OSSO login you use here. On first login you'll be asked to choose a nickname for that site. It would make sense to use the same nickname as here.