External hd's not mounting...

[justin77]

I'm running Kubuntu 9.10 in Virtual Box 3.1.2. And can't seem to get neither my USB drive, nor a Firewire drive to mount inside Kubuntu. I have the Virtual box Guest additions installed, and have spent several hours looking for a solution. But to no avail. Any help, would be really appreciated.

Just so you know more about where I am at... Full disclosure: I'm on a Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo. 2.66 Gig. 4GB RAM. Snow Leopard. The drives are both formatted in Mac OS Extended/Journaled. They both mount fine on my Mac desktop.

Thank you in advance.

[ukchucktown]

Re: External hd's not mounting...

Known issue, VirtualBox has problems with USB, especially on Mac hosts. There is a wealth of information on the VB forums but no solution. I have problems too but have not tested my USB drive on 3.1.2. I'm pretty sure it's still an issue in 3.1.2. Some devices work and some don't. My external USB drive has never worked in VirtualBox. It's one of the reasons I finally switched to VMware Fusion.

[Jonas]

Re: External hd's not mounting...

I don't know much about Mac but for *buntu you can manually mount the usb drive.

Can you even see the usb drive?
to see usb devices use command (in Kubuntu)
explained here

lsusb

so for me to mount my HTC phone I have to(you'll have to make the adjustments accordingly)...

see that the device is there - and it is

>>>>>>Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bb4:0c02 High Tech Computer Corp.<<<<<<
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:0404 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub   
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:c312 Logitech, Inc. DeLuxe 250 Keyboard 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c043 Logitech, Inc. MX320/MX400 Laser Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Now we need to know where it is ..

sudo fdisk -l

will show where it is

...
Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdc1  *      3    62299   1931199+  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

make a mount point where it should be mounted (notice all the external devices you'll find in /media )

sudo mkdir /media/usbtest

and then mount it

$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /media/usbtest -o uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=137

to see, use, copy, move you can now

ls /media/usbtest

will show you the files in the first directory

However I have never got Virtualbox (freeware version) to actually take advantage of USB2, and I'd follow the suggestion from ukchucktown and get WMware instead, where I got USB2 working with Snowhogs advice here but that is from a Kubuntu 'side' of WMware (it may not help but atleast it show WMs potential)

edit; searching the net for "wmware mac usb" gave me almost 4 times as many hits as "Virtualbox mac usb", possibly 4 times as many problems .. or possibly 4 times as many solutions