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vipiligate
Contributor
Contributor

USB Pass through problem with external hard disc

I had connected my 500GB seagate external hard disc to esxi 5.5 host. But it is not available via usb pass through to Windows 2008 VM's on that esxi. External hard disc is NTFS formatted. I want to copy one 50GB vmdk file from my Windows VM to this external hard disc.USB pass through is enabled and usb controller added to VM. Can anyone help why it is not detecting.

Thanks,

Vipil

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DanielOprea
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi,

To answer your questions you need to look at the following links: VMware KB:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102229...

PLEASE CONSIDER AWARDING any HELPFUL or CORRECT answer. Thanks!!
Por favor CONSIDERA PREMIAR cualquier respuesta ÚTIL o CORRECTA. ¡¡Muchas gracias!!
Blogs: https://danieloprea.blogspot.com/
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srwsol
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Hot Shot

You won't see USB devices themselves as available for pass through.  If you plug one in to the host and ESXi recognizes the device then you can assign it to a VM as a USB device, although in some cases, and especially in the case of USB disk drives, there can be a performance penalty.  If ESXi doesn't recognize the device, or if you can't accept the performance penalty, then you need to set the entire USB controller as being a PCI pass through device, and then assign the whole controller to a VM.  That way the VM can operate almost any device, including those ESXi doesn't recognize, and there is negligible performance penalty.   However, be careful when marking USB controllers on the motherboard as pass through devices as you may lose the ability to interact with ESXi via the keyboard and mouse.  If that happens the only way back, short of a re-install, is if you can connect to it with a client over the network and undo the changes.

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