connect usb disk to esx 3.02

[roneng]

Hi, i need to connect a usb disk to esx in order to move a large data to a vm. can it be done? and how?

And is there an efficient way copying data to vm's inside esx?

Thanks

[TCronin]

The vm's don't have access to the ESX host's filesystem so mounting a USB drive won't give you direct access to data you need to copy. You also cannot connect directly to the USB drive since USB is not supported.

I usually just connect the drive to either a Windows or Linux server (depending on the OS of the guest) and then either share it out as a windows or NFS share and copy it over the network.

[esiebert7625]

Just attach it to a Windows server or PC and use the below methods to map to it from ESX so you can copy it. Optionally you can SCP the files to the ESX server using FastSCP and then import the disk file using vmkfstools -i

http://vmware-land.com/Vmware_Tips.html#ESX5

FastSCP (file transfer) -