Can't get a new USB drive to appear in a virtual machine

[dbonsall]

I am running VMWare Fusion 11.0.2, and am trying to connect a new USB hard drive to one of my virtual machines.  When I tell the drive to connect to the desired virtual machine, it disappears from the host computer's desktop, but never appears in the virtual machine.  When I check Disk Utility on both the host computer and the virtual machine, the drive does not appear in either.  Then only thing I can do is to tell it to disconnect from the virtual machine, at which point it reappears in the host computer.

I have restarted the host computer, the virtual machine, and powered off and back on the USB drive.  Another USB drive that I have assigned to that virtual machine mounts just fine.  It's just this new one that doesn't.  Any ideas for getting this drive to mount in the virtual machine would be appreciated.

[wila]

Hi,

What's your guest OS?

What external USB disk are you trying to connect (brand + model)?

Do you know if the external USB disk is perhaps USB3?

If it is USB3, did you verify the USB settings in your virtual machine that it is also set to USB3?

--

Wil

[dbonsall]

Thanks for your reply.

First of all, I actually have two USB drives that will not connect into my virtual machines.  I forgot about the other one, because I did not troubleshoot it at the time (a month or so ago), and merely connected it to the VM via AFP.  A third USB drive connects with no issues.

The host machine is a 2018 Mac mini, fully loaded, except RAM (which is only 16GB).

As for the guest OS, I've actually tried connecting these drives to both El Capitan and Mojave virtual machines.

As for the USB drives, they are all OWC manufactured.  The one that connects with no issue is a Mercury Elite Pro Qx2, which is set up as a RAID 5.  It is the oldest USB drive of the three, and is capable of USB 3.0.  The other two that I cannot get to connect are a Mercury Elite Pro Dual, set up as a RAID 1, and a miniStack, which holds only a single drive.  Both of these models are capable of USB 3.1 (could this be the issue?).

I have tried restarting the host, as well as uninstalling and reinstalling Fusion, to no avail.

All of my VMs do have USB 3.0 compatibility selected in Advanced USB Options section of USB & Bluetooth in Settings.

One thing that I notice is that the missing drives do not appear in Disk Utility in the VM when the drive is told to connect to the VM.  However, they do appear under System Information, but seem to be missing information (they don't appear as drives there).  I have included two attachments.  The first shows the information presented for the USB drive that does connect, while the second one shows the information for one of the drives that does not connect.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

At this moment in time, there is no VMware guest support for USB3.1 devices, so I do indeed think that there lies your problem.

I hope that VMware is working on USB3.1 support, but have no idea if it is even possible.

--

Wil

[dbonsall]

Hello,

I connected the drives to a USB 3.0 hub, and the two 3.1 drives still will not connect.  I figured that the connection into the host would drop to 3.0, and in fact, System Information for the host shows a USB 3.0 hub (under the built-in 3.1 hub).  I would figure that all devices should now look like USB 3.0 devices to Fusion, but they still will not connect.  What's interesting (to me, anyway), is that if I change the setting for the VM to only have a USB 2.0 controller, I can get all the drives to connect.  Seems to me to be a bug in Fusion for their 3.0 controller.

Thanks again for your help.

[wila]

Hi,

Good thinking about inserting the USB3.0 hub.

Out of curiosity do those drives work at the host when they are behind the USB3.0 hub?

--
Wil

[dbonsall]

Hello,

Yes, they do, and they work fine.  Really can't tell any difference on the host, honestly.  I assume, though, that setting the VM to use USB 2.0 is going to slow down the transfer rate inside the VM.  I'll just have to wait and hope VMWare fixes the issue.

Thanks.

[wila]

Hi,

In that scenario I would have expected it to work...

Best thing to do is to contact VMware Fusion support and open a ticket at File a Support Request

It might be that the devices depend on the UAS or UASP protocols, there have been issues with that in the past (see Fusion 7.1.3, USB 3.0 UASP supported? ) and I don't know if it is supported by the USB3.0 implementation from VMware.

--

Wil

[office100]

I agree

IHave the same issue Macbook PRO Catalina Vusion 11.5

all newer USB 3.0 external HDD

doesn' t connect at the VM Win 10 64

since the update to Vusion 11.5 and Catalina

at VM win 7 64 the Problem doesn 't exist.

USB 3.0 HUB doesn’t work

I try a old aktive USB 2.0 HUB an all my drives work again.

You may recognise the problem  in the

Devicemanager

Memorycontroller

USB attached SCSI (UAS) mass storage device

All USB 3.0  HDD using UAS will not work.

All older USB 3.0  HDD Using the Microsoft controller will work fine

.

But that can not be the solution to work with a USB 2.0 hub