Boot a virtual box from USB when USB is not connected

[Wolfgang.Klein]

Hello,

If you search for "booting virtualbox from USB drive", you get plenty of sites telling you how to create a virtual hard drive that is linked to a physical USB drive, that can then be chosen as the hard drive that the virtual machine is to boot from.

The only thing I did not find until now is the correct way to tell the virtual machine to start when the USB drive is not connected to the physical host machine, so the same VM can be used to start another virtual system, e.g. from an ISO file or from another virtual drive. I always have to use the VBox manager to disconnect the virtual drive first, otherwise the VM won't start, if the physical USB drive is not connected. I vaguely remember something about an option that can be set inside the file "usb.vmdk" to overcome this problem, but I have not found that option yet. I already tried to change the disk priority within the VBox manager, and also I tried to declare this drive "hot swapable", but neither options worked.

Can some one tell me what option is needed, please? Thanks in advance!

[Martin]

If you attach a raw disk to a VM it needs to be available during boot. Your only chance seems to be to detach the disk before starting the guest.