Virtualbox can NOT mount an USB drive

Question

I have on my laptop a windows system (windows 8), in which I have a Virtualbox installation(4.2.12, most recent). I have a virtual machine setup with the Virtualbox, and the OS is Ubuntu (12.0 LTS). I connect an USB box (An adapter from SATA to USB) to my laptop, and the filesystem of the SATA disk in the USB box is Ext3. Now my problem is, I can't mount the USB drive inside the VM Ubuntu system, even invisible from /dev

I checked and confirmed that,

1. Virtualbox supports USB 2.0, and my USB box is USB 2.0 version. (I have installed the Oracle Extention pack with the right version)

2. My SATA disk (1 TG) works well with the USB box, for I connect it to a native (I mean not a virtualbox VM) Ubuntu system, it works!

3. My Ubuntu VM works well as well, with an external USB drive. I tried/confirmed with a small USB drive with FAT32 FS.

So, what may I get wrong? Appreciate help!

(Edit, below is the error messages given by Virtualbox when trying to mount the USB drive)

Failed to attach the USB device USB Storage [0016] to the virtual machine water.
USB device 'USB Storage' with UUID {1ddcbf95-913c-459f-a6da-fc7331c3c62f} is 
busy with a previous request. Please try again later.

Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)
Component: HostUSBDevice
Interface: IHostUSBDevice {173b4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a}
Callee: IConsole {db7ab4ca-2a3f-4183-9243-c1208da92392}

Solution 1

I have been dealing with this issue for a few hours now, here is your solution:

• Windows - Right click on Oracle VirtualBox and 'Run as administrator'.

• Linux - Open a terminal and open Oracle VirtualBox as root (ie. 'sudo virtualbox')

• Mac - Do the Apple equivalent of running a program as an administrator (I have absolutely no knowledge of Apple products).

• Once you have Oracle VirtualBox running as administrator, root, etc.. go ahead and create a USB filter as instructed by Nanobrains and vvlevchenko.

This process worked for me on Windows 8.1, I would hope that this process would work in virtually any environment.

Solution 2

I have faced this problem very often with the virtual box. Go to settings page on your virtual box, go to USB, and add the USB filter, when you try adding the filter, it will show you a drop down of the USB devices connected to your laptop, choose one and add it. Once it is attached to your virtual Box, you will no longer be able to see it on your windows once you run your virtual machine. On closing the virtual machine, The USB drive appears back on the host machine.

Solution 3

Please try to create USB filter in VBox GUI and physically re-attach USB hard drive.

Comments

[Admin]

I created the USB filter, and re-tried now, but still the same. Basically, what I did was, after I created the USB filter for it, I removed the USB cable and plug it again onto my Windows host machine - Is this what you wanted me to try by 're-attach'?

[Zibri]

same here.. it disappears from windows and then vbox says it can't attach it. and it's just a pendrive.

[Zibri]

the filter works.. as the vm starts the usb device is disconnected from host but fails to attach to guest (latest vbox 6.1)