Bug Report: Sharing a USB disk with a Fusion guest renders host Disk Utility useless

[drdaz]

Hi

I've discovered an issue with VMware Fusion (currently Version 8.5.5 (5192483)).

When I attempt to connect a USB drive to a guest OS instance, the host's Disk Utility stops being functional. When opening Disk Utility, the window appears and a spinner spins endlessly, never presenting any of the connected disks. This issue appears to be guest OS agnostic; both a Sierra guest and a Windows 10 guest present the same issue.

I've also noticed some other disk related funkiness (like other USB drives being inaccessible until reboot) occurring after the onset of this issue. This isn't great, since my Time Machine backups run on a connected USB disk.

What's worse is that this behaviour is not fixed by stopping the guest, or even quitting Fusion. A host restart is required to regain functionality.

This is on a fresh install of Sierra (very fresh; I installed a new OS drive a couple of days ago so there really isn't anything else going on here).

As an aside, the state of support and transparency here is terrible; I recently bought the product and can't tell whether I'm actually entitled real support. At the time of writing I can't even see evidence that I have a license key for the product in 'My VMware', even though I could see it yesterday.

Config

27" iMac (Late 2012, BTO with highest CPU and GPU options)

16GB RAM

Apple 128GB SSD + Samsung EVO 850 1TB SSD

Host: macOS Sierra 10.12.3 (16D32)

Guest: Sierra (same version), Windows 10 (fully updated)

[RickShu]

Hi drdaz,

Welcome to Fusion Community!

I was unable to reproduce your problem locally. I connect 2 USB flash drives to Windows 10 guest, and the Disk Utility in my 10.12.4 beta host just worked fine. (no hanging)

Would you please provide the detailed steps when you reproduce your problem?

Thanks,

-Rick

[ColoradoMarmot]

For what it's worth, I have this all the time - without VM's running.  The new disk utility is beyond horrible.  You can't even partition a drive from the GUI anymore, and it hangs all the time.

[drdaz]

Just following up here... Further testing suggests that the issue is drive-related. I tested with a different USB drive, and the issue does not present.

The drive with a problem is an old Western Digital 320GB ‘My Passport’ drive for what it’s worth.

[drdaz]

So I believe I found the issue.

The drive was configure weirdly; it used MBR as it's partition scheme but used HFS+ for the only partition on the drive.

After reformatting the drive with the more standard combo of GUID and HFS+, the issue appears to have gone away.

Hopefully this will alleviate somebody's confusion one day.