Win7 Guest shows thumb drive as Removable Disk, but can't see it

W

wrobison

Junior Member
I recently purchased some Sandisk 64GB Extreme USB 3.0 drives, they work great on windows and mac computers, however when the drive is attached to a Windows 7 guest it only shows up as a "removable" drive. And when I double click on it it asks me to insert a disk. The drive works perfectly on the Mac side, and when I plug it into a Windows 7 box it works perfectly there as well.

The PN# is SDK-SDCZ80-064G-A46.
Host: Macbook Pro running 10.10.3 & Parallels 10.2.0 (28956)
Guest: Win7 64bit with matching version of parallels tools.

It came default formatted as Fat-32, and I can read/write to it on the mac side.

If I bring up Diskpart on the guest os it shows the following.

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: IL5646AM008110V
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 64 GB 0 B
Disk 1 No Media 0 B 0 B

DISKPART> select disk 1
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk
SanDisk Extreme USB Device
Disk ID: 00000000
Type : USB
Status : No Media
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

There are no volumes.
DISKPART>

Compared to what OS X shows.
IL5646AM008110:~ rr152510$ diskutil info /dev/disk3

Device Identifier: disk3
Device Node: /dev/disk3
Part of Whole: disk3
Device / Media Name: SanDisk Extreme Media

Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)
File System: None

Content (IOContent): FDisk_partition_scheme
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Total Size: 62.7 GB (62742792192 Bytes) (exactly 122544516 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space: Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes
Read-Only Media: No
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable: Yes

Whole: Yes
Internal: No
OS 9 Drivers: No
Low Level Format: Not supported

IL5646AM008110:~ rr152510$


Now, if I plug the drive directly into a real windows 7 box, this is what i get from DiskPart.

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: IL5646AM034069

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 238 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 58 GB 0 B

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

SanDisk Extreme USB Device
Disk ID: 00000000
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 1 D SANDISK FAT32 Removable 58 GB Healthy
DISKPART>
 
Hello Wrobison,
We understand that you are unable to connect the USB device in the Windows Virtual Machine.
Please follow the steps described here and let us know how it works:
1. Open Virtual Machine Configure, to open refer http://kb.parallels.com/117287
2. Click on the Hardware tab and then choose USB and Bluetooth option at the buttom.
3. Open USB connect Preferences >> Devices >> Select the option which says >> Ask me what to do.
4. Now try connecting the USB drive, you will receive a pop-up stating where would you like to connect the USB drive >> Select Windows.
If you are still unable to find the USB device, follow the steps below:
Start the Virtual Machine >> Click on Devices from the Apple Menu bar >> And then select the USB drive.
For more information, refer to this article, http://kb.parallels.com/111725
 
Last edited:
Please re-read, attaching the thumb drive is not the problem, the Parallels windows guest registers the HD as a Removable Disk with no disk inserted.
 
How do you have the disk connected, via USB menu in Parallels or just shared drive between Parallels <=> Mac
 
I'm going to keep asking questions, so sorry if it's obvious stuff.

Does the USB controller in configuration of the VM have USB 3 checked? Try unchecking it, reboot the VM and see if it connects like this. Win 7 requires special USB drivers that Parallels provides, but I've seen them not install sometimes.
 
I'm having the same problem as well. It seems to be specific to the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 line; I have 5 of these, and none of them work in a Parallels VM. I just upgraded to version 11, and it still doesn't work. Other USB 3.0 flash drives work fine, like the Patriot Magnum. What's different about the SanDisks that Parallels will only let us mount, but not be able to use?
 
I found a work around for this issue, it was none of the suggestions above as I had already checked those. And FYI yes, my VM has the 3.0 drivers installed and enabled. Its not my first rodeo, i've been using Parallels since 1.0.

Bind USB drive to VM via Devices > USB.

When windows registers it as a removable disk and ask you to format it, just yank the thumb drive and re-insert it. Parallels will remember the binding and suddenly its an actual mounted drive.
 
Sandisk USB drives a lot of times have hidden partitions with software on them, like backup software, etc. They are generally hidden and I wouldn't be surprised if Parallels is mounting the wrong partition.

What I recommend actually is use disk utility in OSX to completely clear out and create 1 partition on the disk. Format it via FAT or Win NT if you have paragon NTFS installed on your Mac. Otherwise if you need NTFS, you'll have to mount in your VM first (Devices => USB) and then format the drive in windows.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.
Wrobison: is your suggestion specific to the SanDisk Extreme? When I bind my USB drive to the VM, it did the initial installation of the driver and let me know my USB device is ready for use in Windows, but it didn't give me the option to format it. It just 'sees' it as a removable device, and asks me to insert a disk into the removable drive to continue. The Windows Disk Manager and the CLI DiskPart wasn't of any help, unfortunately.
AlekseyM: I put the drive in a Windows laptop and did a few things; I noticed that it did have a 200mb EFI partition that I went ahead and removed and reformatted as a single partition. No luck getting it to work in a Parallels VM, though.
I've noticed other forums have complained that there's something slightly different about the SanDisk Extremes, that sometimes they cannot be made a bootable USB because of the way they're manufactured. Not sure if that has anything to do with the way Parallels is having trouble recognizing it, but thought it worth mentioning.
 
PS -- I'll gladly send one of my SanDisk Extreme flash drives, if it'll help Parallels debug the situation...
 
AlekseyM said:
Sandisk USB drives a lot of times have hidden partitions with software on them, like backup software, etc. They are generally hidden and I wouldn't be surprised if Parallels is mounting the wrong partition.

What I recommend actually is use disk utility in OSX to completely clear out and create 1 partition on the disk. Format it via FAT or Win NT if you have paragon NTFS installed on your Mac. Otherwise if you need NTFS, you'll have to mount in your VM first (Devices => USB) and then format the drive in windows.
Click to expand...

Already done as detailed in the 1st post of this thread. The drive was cleaned and formatted on a Windows 7 PC using the following commands in this order.
Diskpart
select disk # (1 in this instance)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign label u

All of that and the drive must still be bound to the VM, then physically removed and re-inserted before Parallels will see it as anything other than a Removable Disk without any media inserted.

You could help more if you read the above posts to discover what has already been done to attempt to fix the issue.
 
have you tried article or just replied? when enabling virtual disks PDfM will handle USB devices in a different way. that solved some issues in the past...
 
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