[vSphere Client] Unable to Add a USB Device

[bmcwilliams]

I'm having some trouble adding a USB device on the Client side.  I've added the USB Controller, but my devices show up greyed out as shown below.  The VM is running on Server 2003.  Any ideas?

[sparrowangelste]

vmware tools is installed?

updated?

[bmcwilliams]

VMware tools is installed on the VM, but they have not been updated. 

This is a VM restored from a backup of our sharepoint server.  We've disabled the networking because we're afraid of having two sharepoint servers running at the same time.  Shutting down the other server isn't really an option until after office hours. 

I'm really just trying to recover some files from the server.  I was hoping to transfer the files to my usb drive, but I haven't had any luck getting it to work.  If there's another way to get the files, I would love to hear that as well.

[jrmunday]

What about adding the VMDK's to another VM ... The disks should be accessible and you can copy the data off. When you're done, simply remove the disks without deleting them. Before the days of Dell's extpart tool, I used this successfully to extend system partitions

[bmcwilliams]

That's an interesting idea.  This is probably a noob question, jrmunday... but how would I go about doing that?  I'm kind of new to VMWare.

[jrmunday]

You need a VM (powered off) which has access to the datastore that holds the VM that you want to recover information from. On this VM, edit the virtual machine settings, select the hardware tab and click add. Select Hard disk from the device type, click next and choose "use an existing virtual disk". Click next, and browse to the datastore, and VM folder of the one you want to recover data from ... Here you can select the VMDK (or virtual disk) that you want to add to this VM. Follow the wizard through, and repeat this process for any additional disks from the same VM you are recovering data from. Once you've added all the disks you need power up the VM that you have just edited and the disks should be accessible as the next available drive letters (I am assuming you wont have any NTFS or encryption issues) ... copy the data off and when you're done, power the VM off and remove the disks in the same way you added them, but this time select the disk you want to remove and click remove ... make sure you select the "remove from virtual machine" option and not the "remove from virtual machine and delete from disk" option.

Let me know if you have any issues.

Cheers,

Jon

[sparrowangelste]

the vm doesnt have to be on the network to update vmware tools.

so I would try that first.

though the mount of the vmdk to another vm should work too for you in this case..