When I try to use VCenter to attach a usb hard drive to a VM on a host (Edit Settings, Add New Device , Host USB Device), I get a pink box saying "No available USB devices.". The hard drive is a Seagate 3TB drive. The hosts are Dell PowerEdge T140s with the latest firmware, ESXi 7.0.3, VCenter 7.0.3.
When I use ESXi Shell to run a lsusb command, I see the Seagate device in the list. I tried this on both Dell hosts, same problem. I tried using another Seagate drive. Same problem. I plugged in a Samsung thumb drive. I was able to attach it to the VM (I clicked cancel instead of attaching it).
I kept trying off and on for about 3 days with no success. Then, for some reason I tried connecting the usb device to another VM. The other VM did not already have an attached USB 2.0 controller, so it added one AND FOUND AND ADDED THE SEAGATE DEVICE). I didnt need the Seagate attached to this VM, so I clicked cancel. I then tried to add the Seagate device to my desired VM and IT WORKED. If you're thinking something was corrupted in ESXi tables and got cleared out, so do I.
I've been running this procedure each month for years, and only lately (last 6 months) have been having problems, though not as severe as this. Usually the usb connects after about I try for about an hour.
Is there something I'm doing wrong? Which logs should I be looking into, or should I be running any shell commands to look at things?
