Virtualbox, F14 and External USB disk

Richard Shaw hobbes1069 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 28 00:04:41 UTC 2010


On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan
<pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-11-27 at 09:22 -0600, Richard Shaw wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Alain Roger <raf.news at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > my host is Windows 7 x64 and i have installed VirtualBox latest version.
>> > in VirtualBox i have a guest F14 with latest updates.
>> >
>> > when i connect my external USB disk to PC, VirtualBox detects it and make it
>> > available for guest (F14) as Mass storage.
>> > However, under F14 i'm not able to find this disk.
>> > 1. how can i check for sure that USB disk is available or not ?
>> > 2. how should i mount it if it is not already mounted ?
>> >
>> > basically data on this USB disk should be recovered and transfered to new PC
>> > (windows system).
>> > Western Digital (WD) have their NAS bookWorld as ext.network/USB disk with
>> > Linux partitions on it.
>> >
>> > thank a lot for help.
>>
>> I believe your disk can only be available to one system at a time. If
>> you have it mounted under your guest then it is not available to the
>> host. Unmount it in Virtualbox and it should show back up on the host.
>
> Not so. I see my external disk as available under VBox Windows (guest)
> even while it's already mounted under F14 (host). I don't use it of
> course, that would be crazy, but it's certainly there. Same happens if I
> plugin a pendrive or iPhone. They show up under both systems.

I have to disagree with your here. I just tried it to confirm and when
I plugged in my USB flash drive it showed up on my desktop and opened
in Nautilus as I expected. When I right-clicked on the USB icon in VB
and checked the flash drive it disappeared from my desktop and was no
longer listed in /media and was accessible from Windows XP. When I
unplugged it from XP (virtually) it reappeared on my F14 desktop.

> To the OP: my memory is hazy on this, but I think you need to a)
> shutdown the guest (not just pause it), b) go to the "add disk" dialogue
> under VBox, possibly under the Machine menu, c) add the disk as a new
> attachment to IDE or SATA and note its device name, d) fire up the guest
> system and try to mount the device. Something along those lines in any
> case.

As far as I can tell the OP is wanting to use a USB disk like a USB
disk, not raw disk access. If you do that, then yes, it is available
on both systems, but that would be necessary and potentially
dangerous.

RIchard


More information about the users mailing list