Cannot use a virtual machine on a USB stick

[aTester123]

I have an Acer S7 laptop running Windows 8.1 x64 and VMWare Workstation 11. I have a virtual machine that I'd like to use on this laptop, but because I don't have much free space on the laptop's SSD, I need to run the virtual machine from a USB stick. The USB stick is Kingston HyperX USB 3.0 flash drive (256 GB). The VM's guest OS is also Windows 8.1.

So, I copied the virtual machine to the USB stick, inserted the stick into a USB 3.0 port, and opened the .vmx file in Workstation 11. So far so good. Now, when I start the virtual machine, a few weird things happen:

1. The USB stick's LED starts flashing, which means that Workstation has begun reading the files. After a few seconds, I see the following error message: "Could not create 'D:\Windows 8.1 x64 Std.nvram':Error."

2. At the same moment, the USB drive disappears from "My computer", as if I've pulled out the stick.

3. After a few seconds, I get the "USB device not recognized" balloon in the system tray.

At that point, I can pull out the stick and plug it in again, Windows would recognize the drive just fine, but it doesn't help. Closing the "Could not create 'D:\Windows 8.1 x64 Std.nvram':Error." simply returns the VM to the powered off state.

What I've tried to so far:

1. I disabled the "Automatically connect new USB devices" option, thinking that the VM might get control of the USB port. That didn't help.

2. I created a symbolic link to the VM's folder and opened the VM using a different drive letter to which the physical folder was mapped. That didn't help.

3. I mapped the VM's folder as a new network drive. That helped, I managed to "dupe" the software, but the problem is that all read-write operations are so slow that it takes 20 minutes to boot the VM and once booted, it's virtually impossible to work in the guest OS because it's extremely slow.

So it appears that when I start a VM on a USB stick, the software sends some command to the USB drive that completely resets it, Windows no longer "sees" the drive, and that's the end of the story.

I desperately need help with this problem...

Thank you.

Pavel

[JDlugosz]

Why not try "Player", also on the USB stick, rather than an installed copy of "Workstation".  That's an advertised feature, so it should work.

[aTester123]

Why not try "Player", also on the USB stick, rather than an installed copy of "Workstation".  That's an advertised feature, so it should work.

VMWare Player fails with the same error message.

Pavel

[FredAMK]

I've just run into the same problem albeit with a 64GB Kingston HyperX USB 3,0 flash drive. I get the same problem starting a VM on one of these sticks. It doesn't matter whether the VM was created on the drive directly or copied to it before starting it up.

What's interesting is that we purchased four of these drives and all of them exhibit the same problem. But I have one that was purchased several months ago that works just fine. The part number on the dongle is identical but the older flash drive works while the newer ones don't. I even copied a VM from the older stick to a newer one. When I start the VM up on the older flash drive it fires up just fine. When I do the same on the newer flash drive I get the same error per the original post.

I've tried using the USB 2 port on the Acer laptop that I was using with no difference. I've tried both flash drives on my Surface Pro 3 and again the older stick works while the newer ones fail. I've tried a full format on the stick - both NTFS and exFAT. no difference.

Have Kingston come out with a different firmware on the newer drives? Both the old (working) stick and the newer (broke) sticks were purchased online via Staples in Canada. The only subtle difference between the old and new sticks is the dongle has the country of origin in a slightly different place. The working one has "Taiwan" on a separate line below the "eyes" on the dongle while the new ones have "Taiwan" on the third line of the dongle.

I have VMware Player 7 on the Acer laptop and VMware Workstation 11 on my Surface Pro 3.

This is very frustrating.

Fred