VMware Cloud Community
rifraf
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-01-2013 02:13 PM

External USB Drive not being seen by ESX1 5 host

I just bought a 2tb Western Digital Passport Hard drive for an ESXi host I have in India that I need to copy a vm guest over to another host offsite.  The drive is plugged in but I can see it from remote in the VMWare client.  Is there any actions I need to take either through the client or ssh to detect the drive?

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5 Replies
Linjo
Leadership
Leadership
‎03-01-2013 02:40 PM

ESXi does not support USB Drive as primary (VMFS) storage.

You could moun the USB Driver to a VM and transfer things that way.

// Linjo

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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rifraf
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-01-2013 02:42 PM

That's what I tried but it doesn't see it.  Wouldn't it show up in storage devices?

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sparrowangelste
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎03-01-2013 02:47 PM

this might work for you

havent tried it myself

http://www.vladan.fr/plug-in-the-external-usb-drive-to-esx-server-directly-to-backup-or-copy/

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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Kahonu84
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
‎03-01-2013 03:41 PM

Aloha,

You're making this much more difficult than necessary. Plug the drive into a machine with the vSphere client, browse datastore then download to drive.

Bill

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rifraf
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-01-2013 06:39 PM

Kahonu - I dont have another server/pc there that I can connect the drive to.  Hence connecting it to the esxi server and creating a passthrough and connecting it to a vm that I have there.  Once the copy is done, then the usb drive will be mailed out to the new site.

So how how can I see the device in the console or client?  Is there a log or some command to run?

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