How can I make Virtual Box sees my external hard drive

I have:

installed Virtual Box 3.1.2 on Mac OS X 10.5
setup a Ubuntu 9.10 machine for Virtual Box
have a new external USB hard drive

My question is what can I format my hard drive and configure my Virtual box so that my ubuntu machine can read/write to that drive?

Thank you.

hap497

Posted 2010-01-28T23:24:39.583

Reputation: 2 519

Answers

Make a filter for the USB device (same on Mac OS X):

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Ubuntu should be able to see the drive already.

John T

Posted 2010-01-28T23:24:39.583

Reputation: 149 037

My question is what can I format my hard drive and configure my Virtual box so that my ubuntu machine can read/write to that drive?

Out of the box, the only commonly supported file systems between host and guest would be FAT32 and HFS (but you can add ext2/ext3/NTFS support to Mac OS X).

If you stick with FAT32 (for windows-compatibility reasons) keep in mind that the maximum file size is limited to 4 GB (minus 1 byte).

Molly7244

Posted 2010-01-28T23:24:39.583

Reputation:

HFS already works fine in Ubuntu. – John T – 2010-01-28T23:39:52.263

@John ... cheers. – None – 2010-01-28T23:45:38.483

...although HFS+ does not have write capabilities in Ubuntu :) – John T – 2010-01-28T23:45:56.490