Can't access internal SSD in VM

[MTLLRD]

I want to install Windows 10 on my second SSD but the drive as well as my main SSD isn't showing up in Fusion. I can see the virtual SSD and CD-ROM 0 in disk management. I have my second SSD in the CD drive slot in my mac. The SSD is a Samsung 870 EVO, formatted as ExFAT with the MBR partition map. I couldn't install Windows on the drive so I want to reformat it through the VM. How do I get the SSD to show up in the VM? I'm running Fusion 12.1.0 in macOS Catalina 10.15.7 on a 2012 Macbook Pro.

[Technogeezer]

What Mac are you using and how is that SSD connected to the Mac. The 870 EVO is a SATA SSD from what I can determine, which would mean it's connected via some kind of internal SATA connector or in a USB external enclosure.

I would not recommend running a VM on a ExFAT formatted drive on macOS. Format it as HFS+ or APFS with a GPT partition map.

If all you want to do is create a new VM, you're going about it the hard way. Just go through the steps to create a new VM and install from a Windows 10 ISO you download to the Mac from Microsoft. When creating the new VM, choose to save it on the file system that's on the second SSD.  

[ColoradoMarmot]

Are you trying to install Windows directly on the drive, as a bootcamp install, or as a virtual machine where the files live on the drive? 

The first one requires raw disk mode, which is a PITA to setup and unless you have very specific needs, I'd avoid it at all costs and do one of the other options.

The best and easiest way is to format that drive as APFS, then create a normal virtual machine with the files hosted on it.

[Technogeezer]

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@ColoradoMarmot wrote:

Are you trying to install Windows directly on the drive, as a bootcamp install, or as a virtual machine where the files live on the drive? 

The first one requires raw disk mode, which is a PITA to setup and unless you have very specific needs, I'd avoid it at all costs and do one of the other options.

The best and easiest way is to format that drive as APFS, then create a normal virtual machine with the files hosted on it.

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Agreed that raw disk mode is a PITA. It requires use of a poorly documented command line utility (at least for Fusion it's poorly documented) and enabling a Fusion component for full disk access (also not well documented). The big problem is that macOS does not persistently name disk devices at the OS level. Each time the OS boots it's a crap shoot as to what device name will be chosen for your non-boot disk (it's somewhat but not entirely dependent on when the device is recognized by macOS). When that happens, you're performing the raw disk setup again before powering on the VM. 

[ColoradoMarmot]

Great points, and one other thought - even in raw disk mode, Windows requires NTFS formatted drives (unless something changed).  So the drive won't be accessible from MacOS without third-party tools (which I strongly recommend against - have had significant data loss and corruption trying to run them, and they often lag support for new OS versions by quite a bit).

[todivefor]

Interesting! I ran the exact same setup on my Macbook Pro 2012. I had a 1TB HDD that came with it. I replaced my CD rom drive with 870 EVO 1TB SSD. I turned the EVO into my boot drive and used the internal HDD as a data drive. I ran W10 with fusion mainly for Quicken. That MB Pro 2012 was the best machine ever. I was afraid it was going to just up and die on me. I went with Macbook Air M1 and gave the 2012 to my Granddaughter. Still running and pretty fast, albeit a little warm.

[MTLLRD]

I have the SSD installed in the optical drive bay. I want to install Windows directly onto the SSD. I'm using the VM to reformat the drive so Windows can be installed but the SSD won't show up in the VM.

[MTLLRD]

The former. I tried installing Windows through bootcamp with no luck, so now i'm using the VM to try to reformat the drive without having to remove it. It's installed in the CD drive bay.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Yeah, I believe that machine only supported Windows 7 for bootcamp.  That could be part of the problem.

But Raw disk mode is a real pain to get working right, especially for windows.  Linux is better, but that's like saying shingles is better than measles.  

Did you do the steps here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2097401

You'll see that KB article is 8 years old...this isn't something that's widely done anymore.

If at all possible, you'll be vastly better off just formatting the drive APFS and doing a standard virtual machine with windows installed in the VMDK files.  Otherwise, you'll need to go down the raw disk rabbit hole (it's a lot more complicated than just formatting the drive and attaching it to the virtual machine).

FWIW, since that machine doesn't get security fixes anymore, it's probably time to start planning an upgrade as soon as you can.  Note that there's no bootcamp type of ability on the ARM based macs (and they only run Windows 11 ARM in any case).