A couple of weeks ago, as you can see plainly below, I stated that these
instructions below, which I had found online at that link, were for a
procedure to create a VM that would boot an OS that had been installed
previously onto a USB drive, one which could be booted by itself without a
VM by attaching the USB device to a physical machine capable of booting from
a USB. I now have to say that I do not believe that these instructions were
correct at all. I believe that I too hastily accepted them, but after
working with the booted OS off and on now for a while, and after finding
that I was not satisfied with the way that it was working, at best
intermittently, I have to reject these instructions.
However, I have now found another procedure online, a more complete and
better explained one, which does in fact create a VM that runs properly so
far as I have seen from testing it more thoroughly. These new instructions I
found here:
http://knowing-itech.blogspot.com/2012/08/setup-virtual-machine-to-boot-from
-usb.html.
If the first instructions were ever adequate for a pen drive, I cannot say
because I believed that they were also intended to be used for a much larger
USB hard disk device, and it was in such a device that I tried to use it but
unsuccessfully. I hope my original recommendation did not cause anyone to
attempt it and to run into a lot of difficulty. These new instructions do
certainly work well for my USB device.
The inadequacy of the first instruction is due to the fact, which is
corrected in the second instruction, that setting up a VM to boot a USB
device actually requires creating two virtual disks for it to mount. One on
the SATA controller and another on the IDE controller. The one mounted on
the IDE controller is one that has to be created on the Windows command line
using the "vboxmanage" command. The one mounted on the SATA controller can
be created in VBox GUI just as a typical virtual disk is created normally.
These two different virtual disks apparently work in conjunction to make the
magic happen. Both of these disks are created as a vmdk type of disk.
One point I am still not clear on about the creation of the virtual disk
that mounts to the SATA controller is how big it should be designated as
becoming initially. The instructions did not clarify this point. I was able
to create it as one that would grow dynamically, and that allowed it to be
created as a small disk. However, I also thought that it perhaps should be
allowed to grow to a size equal to the actual size of the USB device, and
this is what I configured for it. Even though, it seems to me, it should not
have to actually grow at all and consume physical hard disk space within the
VM because the real hard disk is already present in the USB device itself. I
hope that make sense. If anyone has real working knowledge and experience
with such a situation, your thoughts about this point would be welcome.
John A. Wallace
The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if you get in the first stroke.
From: John A. Wallace [mailto:jw72...@verizon.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 1:12 AM
To: 'Community mailing list of VirtualBox users'
Subject: [VBox-users] booting a USB device in a VM
I am trying to follow a new procedure, for me at least, but not succeeding,
and I want to run it by the group for ideas. I have a USB hard disk in an
enclosure, which I can connect to a PC and boot into using the BIOS boot
options when the machine is booted. It is a Linux OS. It runs quite well and
completely independently from the OS on the hard disk inside the PC. I would
also like to be able to boot from this same device using a VM in VBox. Since
there is no option to set up to boot from a USB in the GUI, so far as I am
aware, I looked online for some alternatives using VBox, and I found these
fairly easy instructions:
<http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-a-usb-flash-drive-in-virtualbox/>
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-a-usb-flash-drive-in-virtualbox/. Although
that procedure pertains to a flash drive, the principle seems to me to be
just the same; so I thought to apply it to my case.
In the instruction there is an illustration with an image, step #7, but its
image is not exactly like what I see when I start to create a hard disk for
the VM. It may be an older version on which the illustration is based.
Nevertheless, I was able to get around this step by using two steps. First I
created a VM without any disk whatsoever. Secondly, after I created it, I
went into the settings dialogue for the Storage devices and used the
existing Sata Controller to add a disk at that point. I browsed out to the
file that had been created in the online instruction during step #5, and I
chose it. However, I got an error message which I can show here:
Failed to open the hard disk %USERPROFILE%\.VirtualBox\usb.vmdk.
Permission problem accessing the file for the medium
'%USERPROFILE\.VirtualBox\usb.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).
Result Code: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component: Medium
Interface: IMedium {29989373-b111-4654-8493-2e1176cba890}
Callee: IVirtualBox {3b2f08eb-b810-4715-bee0-bb06b9880ad2}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
I would like some ideas about how to deal with it if anyone has any ideas
what it means. I have no clue at this point. If this method is not going to
work, I will have to try another approach.
John A. Wallace
The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if you get in the first stroke.
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