USB Drive Disconnecting

[JJas007]

My virtual machine keeps losing connectivity to an external USB Drive that is hosted on my Macbook Pro.  Is there any way I can a) prevent this; b) edit a file so that the connection comes back; c) understand what might be causing this to happen?

There is nothing that is obvious that makes this connection go away.  When it does go away the options under "Settings" > "USB & Bluetooth" also disappear.  I cannot duplicate this at will.

This has been happening for quite some time and I find it a pain to shut down the VM and then restart it.

I have Fusion V 8.5.8 (5824040).

Thanks for any help you can provide.

John

[wila]

Hello John,

Welcome at the VMware community forums.

When I read about your problem, the first thing that comes to my mind is that macOS is putting your external disk (or the USB port) to sleep.

There's a utility that should keep your disks alive by reading from it on a regular interval.

Not sure if that still works on Sierra.

See this article for details and a link to the tool.

https://www.shilling.id.au/2014/03/24/mac-pro-faster/

Btw, you mention that you have to shut down the VM. Can't you just unplug the disk, wait 30 seconds and plug it in again?

Or am I misunderstanding and is your VM stored at this external USB disk (in which case unplugging the usb disk is bad advice). ?

--

Wil

[JJas007]

Thanks, Wil.

I don't think the USB External drive is being put to sleep, as it is accessible from the Mac, meaning I see it and can access it and the data on it.  Having done that, the VM Settings still DO NOT show any USB External disks.  Having said that, I did check out the link you referenced and I will try the utility, "Keep Drive Spinning", to see if that helps.  I'll post any results in a few days, as sometimes it takes a couple of days before it goes missing!  (Points awarded IF it stays for several days!)

The VM is NOT stored on this external drive.  Yes, unplugging the drive that contains the VM would be bad!!!  And yes, that's experience talking!  We all have to learn from experience.

Actually, I did call VMware support and they remoted in, looked at the settings and saw no USB disks available, said, "Hmmmm!", shut down the VM, restarted it and checked the Settings again, and of course the external disk was there, connected it and said, "There, all fixed.".  So I thanked them, and now I thought I would ask the "world" if anyone has any ideas.

Again, thanks for your time and advice.  I do appreciate it.

John

[wila]

Hmm.. smells like the USB arbitration service having issues then.

You could also  try the following when it happens:

$ sudo /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/services/services.sh --stop

which would stop all services including network and USB

Then start those again using:

$ sudo /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/services/services.sh --start

--

Wil

[ColoradoMarmot · Accepted solution]

Make sure that system/preferences->energy is set to 'prevent sleep when screen blanks'.  I've had this happen if I fail to do that, as the drive disconnects on sleep.

[JJas007]

OK.  I have changed the "energy" settings in System Preferences.  It has been working for almost 2 days.  Have seen this before, so not ready to award points.  If it lasts for a week, I'll award points.

Thanks to both Wil & dlhotka.

John

[ColoradoMarmot]

Good luck 🙂

[JJas007]

Well, I know it's been longer than a week, but since I changed the energy settings, as suggested by dkhotka, it has NOT Failed!

So, thank you very much and hopefully this may help others.

John

[TECH198]

Its a shame u can't control this independently, like you can do on Windows.