How do you get a VMWare ESXi 4.1 Server to recognize a USB Flash Drive?

Question

I have a VMWare ESXi 4.1 server that hosts several virtual machines (the server is just for my home use.) From one of those VMs, I wanted to copy some files onto a USB stick.

I see that you can add a USB Controller to the Virtual Machine from within vSphere. And that works, and I can see the USB Controller in Device Manager on the Windows Server 2008r2 Guest Virtual Machine.

But I can't seem to see the USB 2.0 flash drive from the guest OS.

Is there a trick I am missing?

Answer 1

Once you have added you USB controller to the VM you need to add a device separately.

Go to Edit virtual machine settings and click Add... then choose USB device and click Next> you should get a list of available devices to choose from. Select the one you want and click Next>then Finish.