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I'm running a centos 7 host machine with VirtualBox-5.2-5.2.16_123759_el7-1.x86_64 and trying to install a windows 10 guest using Win10_1803_English_x64.iso
There's no hard drive available in the windows 10 install process. In setting up the guest vm I originally used 'VBoxManage storagectl $VM --name "SATA Controller" --add sata...etc' but that didn't work, so I deleted the vm and rebuilt it with 'VBoxManage storagectl $VM --name "IDE Controller" --add ide' and that doesn't work either. How do I get the guest machine to see a hard drive?

For Windows 10 you are best sticking with a SATA controller. I think though, that as well as adding the controller with "VBoxManage storagectl ..." you will also need to run "VBoxManage createmedium ..." to create a virtual disk file and "VBoxManage storageattach ..." to attach the virtual disk to the machine.

-Andy.

As Andy says, adding a disk controller... adds a disk controller. You can then attach one or more virtual drives (i.e. VDIs) to that controller.

thanks for your reply, still not having much luck. this is puzzling because the vm is present and named 'windows-10'.
I've attached a copy of showvminfo and it shows 'harddisk' in the list. Thanks for any further help

Try wrapping the "windows-10" argument in quote marks. The hypen character may have special significance on the command line, just like space.

Also, "createmedium" is not a VM modifier command, so the VM name should not be there anyway. See the following syntax summary from the user manual, and notice that the command syntax doesn't specify <uuid|vmname> for the first argument of that command.

silly me the command 'VBoxManage createmedium disk --filename "/home/tony/VirtualBox\ VMs/$VM/$VM.vdi" --size 30000' worked ok (without 'windows-10' in it) but still there's no hard drive present in the windows 10 install.

At the moment you have a virtual hard disk controller (VBoxManage storagectl) and a virtual hard disk (VBoxManage createmedium). All you need to do now is connect them with the virtual SATA cable:

VBoxManage storageattach "Windows-10" --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium "/home/tony/VirtualBox\ VMs/$VM/$VM.vdi"

...or something a bit like that.

-Andy.

As mentioned, "createmedium" is a medium management command, not a VM management command, so I would hope that no VMs are affected by it. You need an additional command to do that - see Andy's tip.

YAY!! thankyou, I have a hard drive. I did use a very similar command when originally setting up the vm but it obviously wasn't exactly right The command that did work was:
VBoxManage storageattach $VM --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium "/home/tony/VirtualBox VMs/$VM/$VM.vdi" (without the backward slash)
thanks again

Thanks for reporting back.