Physically Mounting A USB Disk Under a VM
 

Hello Guys, Thanks for the nice Job of keeping this forum alive.
Currently I am Running a couple of UNIX Virtuals on my Win7 Box and of recent I managed to acquire a new USB 2TB external HD which I want to use for My Backups.
But because of issues with Windows Virus/Malware and the fact that i would love to physically share this drive with my linux desktop at work, i just want to mount it under one of the VMs.
So my question is; is it possible to physically mount this USB Disk under one of UNIX virtual machines because for reasons above I don't want to use virtual Disks on it.

Yes, Maybe and no. What VM are you using? Does this unix also support usb devices?

am using a blend of Ubuntu, debian and recently I am totally switching to FreeBSD. Its totally cool. hope this helps.

I still would need to know the application you are using on Windows 7. Almost every virtual machine supports a way to attach a physical disk and/or usb to the client. The notable exception is VirtualPC. Every VM has pretty clear documentation on how to attach a usb device to the client.

A few of the VM's also offer a sort of integration add on that allows you to cut and paste across host and client and offers some video and other improvements.

Am running Virtual box 4.0 on windows 7. hope this helps.

There are basically four ways to get a usb drive to be accessed by virtualbox. One is to attach a filter to the vm settings before you boot the client. Two is to attach the usb after it is booted. Third is to use some form of transfer like ftp, smb over the virtual network or even add in guest additions to cut and paste. If you keep linux only there would only be the smallest chance any cross platform virus would attack. Dunno why the VB documents are some complex. Simple video should be out there to show how to do it.

To attach USB drives to VM guests all I have done in the past is plug them in, unmount them in Windows (don't recall what the command is though, sorry I think it's available on the right-click menu in Computer or explorer) then select the USB stick uncer Devices->USB devices in VirtualBox's menu for the guest.

I don't even bother unmounting (you don't want to eject) it in windows. I just go to the options where it allows you to select usb devices, then attach. It takes a while to show up. It also may say something like installing new device in windows during this process.

In some cases I have had to use a filter on the client before it is booted. Either way would be the most common ways.

Thanks alot guys. let me give it a go and see what i come up with.

yipeee. I finally made it work using the USB filters. thanks a lot guys for the help.

Seems like filters work better on linux or odd format or unpartitioned drives.

Thanks for the update. Mark it as solved maybe.