eSata can not be directly used in a VM as a VM has no SATA-controller.
Thats why you must use it as a "physical disk"
To do that you open the Virtual hardware Editor and click add "disk"
it will give you three options - you want the last one " advanced - use physical disk"
Then you select the correct disk by checking the disknumber. Compare with the disknumber in diskmanagement of the host.
Picking the correct number is very important.
When you now start the VM Workstation will fail after a few seconds or minutes.
That is why you must use diskpart.exe on the host first - and set the disk in question to status "offline"
In case that is not enough use the tool from the post I already mentioned above.
When all that is done you can start the VM - it will not see the disk as eSATA but as an IDE or SCSI-disk - thats normal.
As I mentioned before virtual machines have neither eSATA nor SATA.
When you want to use the disk with the host again you must power off the VM.
Open diskpart and set the disk to online status again.
VERY IMPORTANT : NEVER AND I MEAN NEVER TAKE SNAPSHOTS OF THIS VM OR USE SUSPEND OR SLEEP OR HIBERNATE INSIDE THIS VM
> does it have to be done everytime I bring up the virtual machine?
Yes - no way around that
... diskpart ... no need to download it - you already have it.
Forgot to mention - you must start Workstation as administrator if you doo this
Take care - this is flagged as "advanced" for good reasons - don't be careless if you use disks like this - it is very easy to mess up the disks
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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...
