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A702mar1950j
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I've recently upgraded to VMware Fusion 11.5 (required due to an OS upgrade on Mac, Catalina) and I've installed windows 10 on VMware Now my usb drive is not recognized by VMware. Is this a Mac problem, a VMware problem or a Windows 10 Problem?

I have recently upgrade my Mac OS to Catlina, which then required me to upgrade my VMfusion to 11.5.   After doing so and getting Windows 10 reinstalled in VMware I've discovered the USB drive is not being recognized by the VMware/windows environment.  I've been in setting of VMware and under USB settings the box is checked to ask what to do with the USB drive.  But I'm not being asked when a usb drive is plugged in, it just loads on the Mac.

Any suggestions would be a big help, I've read several posts about this issue, but none were specific to 11.5.   And solutions presented if the other versions haven't seemed to work or I've not implemented them in the correct order. 

Thanks for any suggestions,

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KamenGopin84
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Hi A702mar1950j,

Try updating to latest MacOS Catalina 10.15.5.

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scott28tt
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Moderator: Please post threads into the correct product area. Thread moved to the Fusion area.


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Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
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DavidNicholls2
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I took have this problem. The same environment (the same Mac, the same external USB drive) worked successfully in with a Windows 7 emulation.

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KamenGopin84
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Hi A702mar1950j,

Try updating to latest MacOS Catalina 10.15.5.

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hollistonma
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A702mar1950j
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Thanks for the help, I upgraded and the problem resolved. 

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Fabiozib
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I have the same problem but updating Catalina did not work.

it is always with the same Western Digital Drive, I thought its controller was gone and bought a new one... same problem (actually the new connected once, but now not anymore). BUT another extrernal drive connect with no problem!

windows tells there is a driver issue but the troubleshooter is not correcting it so I don't know how to force reinstall the driver

the Mac sees the drives perfectly... they're all formatted in NTFS and I use NTFS for MAc for the other side

oh, I also tried to reinstall the VM tools 11,0,6 to no avail

any further suggestion?

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KamenGopin84
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Hi Fabiozib​,

I assume you are using VMware Fusion 11.5.5. As a workaround, can you please try auto-connecting the WD device. Go to "Virtual Machine > Settings > USB & Bluetooth" and for the WD device change the "Plugin Action" to "Connect to Windows". Then, re-plug the WD device to the host. The WD device will be automatically connected to the Windows VM. Does the WD device work properly in this case?

Regards,

Kamen

ColoradoMarmot
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Mac NTFS drivers have a long and troublesome history - everything from connection issues to data loss and corruption.  It's very possible that that software is causing the problem.  Try completely uninstalling the Mac NTFS drivers and see if the guest can see the drive.

FWIW, while exFAT has it's own issues, it's a far better overall option for cross platform drives than any other file system.  Just make sure you keep good backups (exFAT only has one copy of the file table, and can become corrupt easier than HPFS/APFS/NTFS/ABCDEFS 🙂

Fabiozib
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Thank you all,

I forgot to mention that:

- it happens with 2 windows 10 VM

- it happens only with 2 USB 3.0 Western Digital Essential. It does NOT happen with a WD passport which happen to be USB2.

so guess what?

after few test I found the ROOT problem: it is a BUG in Fusion 11.5.5, must be with the USB 3.0 driver that affect all VM

I downgraded Fusion to 11.5.3 (luckilly I kept the .dmg) and drives are again available !

Lamentable bug from VMWare....

markn456
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Same here. Downgrading Fusion to 11.5.3 works perfectly. I have said before, how does this make it past QA before releasing. Every single release since 11.5.3 has this problem. Early reports on Fusion 12.x has the same problem. When Big Sur is released we will be forced to upgrade to VMware Fusion 12.x we are screwed if VMware cant fix this.

Very Frustrating

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