Comments on: Boot your USB Drive in VirtualBox

By: Vania S.

Vania S. — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:30:29 +0000

Thank you for a great tutorial, it was very well written. I feel your information is outdated however, because there is a much easier and better way to get a USB drive to boot in a Virtual Machine.

1. Go to http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagerdl.html , and download the most recent .zip .
2. Extract it, and navigate to /intsall/plpbtin.iso .
3. Add the ISO in the VM, and install PLoP to the virtual hard disk (option 1)
4. Now, when you turn on the VM, it gives you an option to boot USB, Floppy, Hard Drive, and CD.

This method might be easier, plus users will not need to create a new virtual image of their USB after every single change to it.
Thank you for your time, I hope this information will be put to good use.
Vania S.

By: Ace

Ace — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:23:11 +0000

Thanks Mate, Helped…

By: Rom4ik

Rom4ik — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:46:10 +0000

Thanks a lot! Now I can boot from my USB-HDD!

By: Tesla-dln

Tesla-dln — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:39:27 +0000

Аллилуйя!!! Используя данный способ, прекрасно загружаюсь с USB-HDD. Большое спасибо… Thank you very much

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:08:19 +0000

Thanks for the tips. Your article actually reminded me that USB drives are reported as “PhysicalDriveN” as well.

By: Joe Dowd

Joe Dowd — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:59:48 +0000

Thank you Bharat for taking the time to post these excellent instructions )

By: Bharat Balegere

Bharat Balegere — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:27:34 +0000

Thanks.
I will update my post

By: parsons

parsons — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:37:32 +0000

If you take this cmd :
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename D:\Documents and Settings\y\.VirtualBox\VDI\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 -register
You will get [Syntax error: Invalid parameter ‘and’]

Take this cmd :
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename “D:\Documents and Settings\y\.VirtualBox\VDI\usb.vmdk” -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 -register
Its works great!

By: Yoni

Yoni — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:50:56 +0000

I haven’t tried it, but perhaps you should set the drive to Writethrough instead of Normal (the default).

Either change it in VirtualBox.xml or use `VboxManage.exe modifyhd ` (see the user manual for more information).

By: Yoni

Yoni — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:38:03 +0000

Works great, thanks!

BTW, for those who are paranoid like me, there’s a simple way to mount the physical device as read-only.

In the .vmdk file, under “Extent description”, change RW to RDONLY.