Removable USB Drive - The Device is currently in use.

[zatara]

I'm trying to use a USB Hard Drive (Western Digital) attached to the host computer.

When I go to vm - > removable devices -> Western Digital External HDD - > connect

It says, unsuccessful and that the device is currenty in use. I don't have it mapped to a drive letter on the host machine. Also I tried the eject hard ware on the host machine, but I still get that message.

Any ideas how I can get it to work?

Thanks. Using Workstation 7.1

[RParker]

Any ideas how I can get it to work?

You said it's attached to the host computer, USB devices can only be used by one device at a time. so if you have it attached, it's probably assigned as a drive letter on the host, disconnect, and tell the host to IGNORE the drive (simply don't use a drive letter or let the host mount the drive), but still leave it plugged into USB.

Now your VM can see the USB ports and use the drive. the trick is only one OS can use the file system at a time..

Of course you can always share the drive via the host, same thing...

[zatara]

No, I made sure it's not assigned a drive letter.

I also went to the "safely remove hardware" icon in the task bar and stopped the device which didn't help either.

[RParker]

I also went to the "safely remove hardware" icon in the task bar and stopped the device which didn't help either.

Safely remove means it's no longer mounted, and therefore not "active" in the system, you won't be able to use it in this state anyway. It must be active, but just not in use, so something is trying to access files and therefore locking the system.

If you can't get it via USB you might have to share it, since the VM is local it's really the same thing, you can share host files directly from the VM in Workstation, so this is transparent.

[marshall28]

Was there ever resolution to this problem? I am currently facing this same issue and a reboot of the server doesn't remove the device is in use problem. running handle.exe from sysinternals on the windows machine shows that PID 1300 svchost.exe is attached to the usb g: . this PID is also attached to other internal hard disks though c: and d:.

what do you suggest?

[patriotzhou]

I'm facing the same issue here, i read another post said maybe Intel USB 3.0 driver caused the problem.

Thanks.

[Screeny86]

For me using another USB port solved the problem on Workstation 9. But the ports i tried first were no USB3.0 ports, just went from Laptop-internal ports to Dockingstation ports.

[MNWII]

THe USB 3.0 port was my issue also. I changed to USB 2.0 and all is happy.

[vannus3]

I concur, moving from USB3 to USB2 fixed my issue.

(issue was USB MultiTouch monitor not disconnecting from host. Hardware is AMD rather than intel)

[davidb1234]

This is a major problem on a surface pro 2 with 1 USB3 port.  USB ports become non functional and problematic all the time with vmware workstation 10.0.2 on a surface pro 2 running 8.1.