VMware Player 3.1.1 corrupting USB flash drives

[GnatGoSplat]

VMware Player 3.1.1 seems to frequently corrupt my USB flash drives. Sometimes performing I/O will take a very long time and hang the VM. The most recent time is using a Windows 7 Enterprise host and Windows 7 Ultimate guest. I had the flash drive connected to the VM, then tried to copy a 5MB file and it hung. After about 15-minutes with my VM hung up, I tried to end task and tried to kill the explorer.exe process, but the VM would not respond to either. The only thing that worked was pulling the flash drive. When I re-inserted it, it needed to reformat.

I had a similar problem on a completely different machine with a Windows 7 Ultimate host and Windows XP guest. I did eject safely from the guest and pulled the flash drive, but when I put it in another machine, I discovered the entire root directory was trashed with a handful of files having been renamed to gibberish characters with 0 byte lengths.

I remember having slow response problems with Player 3.1, but only started having corruption with 3.1.1. Is there any fix for this?

[GnatGoSplat]

DOH! Just upgraded to 3.1.2 and this just happened again for the first time in weeks. Am I the only one having such issues with flash drives?

[continuum]

sorry for the stupid question but it has to be asked ...

Do you unmount - remove the driveletter - of the flash-drive on the host system before you assign the stick to the VM ?

If not - you WILL corrupt the stick




_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

[GnatGoSplat]

I do if it gets assigned to the host system to begin with, but usually don't have to, because it gets connected to the VM guest by default as soon as I plug it in.

Both of the most recent times it got corrupted after downloading from Firefox directly to the flash drive. It downloaded just fine, then during the Firefox virus check, it hangs. I tried to End Task on Firefox, but that didn't work. I tried to end task Explorer.exe, but that didn't work. My VM will be stuck indefinitely until I pull out the flash drive, then everything continues as normal, but putting it back in results in a Format or Cancel screen. I can usually use a recovery program to recover most of the files, then reformat and copy them back over.

[WoodyZ]

Well based on what you've said in your last reply it's understandable that you corrupted your USB Flash Drives.

You can't just pull a drive when I/O is occurring on it as that's a sure recipe for disaster.

[GnatGoSplat]

Yeah, but the issue is the USB gets stuck and hangs the system. Until I pull the USB flash drive, the VM guest is frozen and unusable. No processes can be killed. It's as if the I/O times out, but doesn't let the OS know. I've let it sit half an hour, it doesn't recover.

[WoodyZ]

Then my suggestion would be don't use the device if it's not reliable. I know that's not what you want to hear but unless you can figure out why it's hanging not much else you can do.

How many VM's do you have and does this happen on all of them?

Have you uninstalled/reinstalled the VMware Product and uninstalled/reinstalled VMware Tools in the Guest(s)?

Have you tried using a Live Linux OS ISO Image as a VM in an attempt to see if the issue persists?