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GiZmO1269
Contributor
Contributor

2TB USB Portable Drive - USB Device not detected

ESXi 5.0

vSphere 5.0

Good Morning all

I am trying to perform a backup to USB disk on my VM file server for use with Offsite backup. On a physical server I would connect the portable device and point the backup to the drive.

When I connect the device to the host it is not detected by vSphere. At first I thought the usbarbitrator had stopped and required restarting, but I tried a 1TB USB device and that shows no problem.

Is there a USB hard disk limit that ESX will support? I would of thought I would have found something with a google search but I couldnt find anything.

The 2TB disk shows up on my laptop and PC, it is formatted as NTFS (if that makes a difference).

Thanks in advance

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3 Replies
iw123
Commander
Commander

HI,

ESXi cannot read NTFS. Are you trying to pass the USB device through to the virtual machine?

*Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers
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GiZmO1269
Contributor
Contributor

thanks for your reply

I see, I have tried format options from my Windows laptop but NTFS is the only option.

Yes I am trying to pass through to the VM.

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Sharpy101
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 5.5

I am having the same issue, a 1 TB USB drive appears fine and works well, coming up as formatted as NTFS within the VM.  When I connect a 2TB drive of the same make, the USB device isn't available to pass through.

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