How to connect a flash drive to a VMware VM when the drive is ‘not readable’

flash-memoryhard driveusbvmware

Introduction

I'm running:

  • High Sierra v10.13.6
  • VMware Fusion v11.5.1

I'm attempting to connect a flash drive (USB 3.0) to a virtual machine (Redhat). That virtual machine is a guest to my Mac host.

What I've Done So Far

In the VM Settings->USB & Bluetooth, I've set these options:
USB compatability 3.0 & connect to this virtual machine

After connecting the flash drive to my mac, I see the following message:
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer

The flash drive never shows up in the list of Connected USB devices.

Ignore and Mount

Seamus suggested the following in the comments:

What happens if you "Ignore", and then mount the drive from your VM?

After ignoring the connected device, there seems to be no indication that the VM sees the flash drive:

No USB Devices

Also, I did lsusb in the VM and got the following output:

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0e0f:000b VMware, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Question

How do I connect the flash drive up to my virtual machine?

Best Answer

Re-install VMWare. You may need to go to your Mac's System Preferences->Security & Privacy->General and allow VMWare permissions in the 'Allow apps downloaded from:' section.

For reference I updated to the following versions and I was able to get my flash drive to show up inside of my VM:

  • Catalina v10.15.5
  • VMWare Fusion v11.5.5
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