MacOS Guest: internal hard drive is external ?

[TECH198]

In Fusion 8.x why is a the VM treating internal SSD as an external drive?  (Attached)

[bluefirestorm]

The weird thing is the macOS VM doesn't see the disk as "removable" if you look at the System Report.

But it is more likely to do with the Virtual Disk capabilities/properties.

EDIT: added screenshot

On a Windows 10 VM (doesn't matter if it's on Fusion, Workstation, or ESXi), the virtual disk will appear as an Ejectable device. Looking at Device Manager the virtual disk has the CM_DEVCAP_EJECTSUPPORTED.

I can make the Eject of the controllers and NIC card go away in the Windows 10 VM with the devices.hotplug = "FALSE" in the vmx but the Eject of the disk remains (so far I have tried this on only one VM).

[wila]

Hi,

Some more background info on the hotplug feature:

Workstation 10: Windows "Safely Remove" Gone Wild

That does not really answer the original question though, I have no answer for that.

--

Wil

[bluefirestorm]

Adding a second virtual SATA disk to a macOS VM; the System Report show as "Removable Media: No" and "Detachable Drive: No" but Disk Utility reports it as "Ejectable" and "PCI External Physical Volume"; same as the first virtual disk.

The second virtual disk is ejectable so long as it is not in use (just like the behaviour in a Windows VM); even though both secondary disks are connected to the virtual SATA controllers of their respective VMs.

[DaveP]

Try adding this to the VMX file:

ahci.port.hotplug.enabled = "FALSE"

[bluefirestorm]

The ahci.port.hotplug.enabled = "FALSE" setting made both virtual disks to be identified as internal and non-ejectable for the macOS VM.