Booting from USB devices in Fusion?

[rx-sp]

Is it possible to boot from USB devices, such as memory sticks?

Can't seem to get it to work --- the USB stick just isn't recognzed as a removable storage device. Boots fine on a PC.

[WoodyZ]

At the present time in Fusion you can boot from one of the following:

Floopy Disk Image File

CD/DVD or ISO Image

OS on the Virtual Hard Disk

PXE

[rx-sp]

Yet you can boot from USB in the Windows version?

[WoodyZ]

Yet you can boot from USB in the Windows version?

While you may have a question mark at the end of your sentence nonetheless the sentence is in the form of a statement so are you making a statement or asking a question?

AFAIK and from what I've read you cannot boot from a USB Flash Drive in Workstation 6.0 and I haven't looked at 6.5 Beta. If by chance one can actually boot from a USB Flash in Workstation keep in mind that that product cost $100 more then Fusion does and even though Fusion is based on the source code of Workstation, Fusion is a toy compared to Workstation! I think I can safely say that many of us that have used Workstation for years were extremely disappointed with Fusions' lack of features compared to Workstation!

[Aaron_tremblay]

I have a similar issue with booting from a USB flash drive. My Goal is to test anti-virus bootable flash drives to ensure they work properly while using windows 7 in a virtual environment. I am using Windows 7 32 bit, and Fusion 6.

Thank you

-Aaron

[WoodyZ]

Aaron_tremblay wrote:  ... My Goal is to test anti-virus bootable flash drives to ensure they work properly while using windows 7 in a virtual environment. I am using Windows 7 32 bit, and Fusion 6.

I boot my USB Flash Drive that's running KAV Rescue to update its signatures, from a Virtual Machine, with Plop Boot Manager.  Note that KAV Rescue can update from any system it boots that has an Internet Connection however I keep it updated through a Virtual Machine as the system that going to get scanned typically is disconnected form the Internet until it checked out.

If you're going to test booting an UEFI/GPT USB then a boot manager like Plop isn't needed however you'll need to manually add the following option to the Virtual Machine's .vmx configuration file.  (This is not use with Plop.)

firmware = "efi"

If using the above option, have a look at: Editing the .vmx file for your VMware Fusion virtual machine (1014782)