How do I access an external drive with Fusion?

[chrisoakland]

I am trying to access my external hard drive from a program I am running in Fusion.

I can not locate it under My Computer. Any one know how to do this?

[PrismaticKen]

Make sure that your VMware software is "connecting" the physical device (I'm guessing via USB or Firewire) to the guest OS.

If you've done that, and you STILL don't see the device in your virtual machine, there's a decent chance, seeing this is a Fusion board, that your drive is in a file system your guest OS can not read.

This is a common problem with Windows and file systems that aren't FATxx or NTFS. It simply can not read them. You might need software like MacDrive to read "OS X"drives in Windows. I use Mac Drive software and I love it. Give the Mac Drive people your money for a full copy, they deserve it. - just like the VMware folks.

Good luck.

[WoodyZ]

Make sure that your VMware software is "connecting" the physical device (I'm guessing via USB or Firewire) to the guest OS.

You cannot directly connect to a FireWire device like you can a USB device in Fusion. If the external drive is a FireWire drive then to connect to either by an SMB Share in OS X or as a VMware Shared Folder. I prefer the former to the later.

[admin]

Make sure that your VMware software is "connecting" the physical device to the guest OS.

Note that when you do this, the USB device is no longer available to the host - it can only be controlled by one OS at a time. If you need access from both the host and guest simultaneously, use some method of file sharing as Woody suggested.

[PrismaticKen]

Yes, assuming you only want one OS to use the drive at a time - Vmware will "gobble up" drives and disconnect them from the Host when they're mounted into the Guest.

I figured that's what you (the OP) were going for. If you're trying to get a whole bunch of OSes to share the drive, get your Samba on. I suggest a program called Share Points.

http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

That oughta do it...I hope.