How to connect a physical USB Drive into a Hyper-V VM

How to connect a physical USB Drive into a Hyper-V VM

In this article we will connect  a physical USB drive to  a VM.
To begin, plug the physical USB drive into your computer.
  1. On the computer that has the attached drive, go to This PC and identify the USB drive you want to attach to the VM
    To identify a detachable drive, right click on the drive and click Properties
    You will see a window similar to one of the two pictures below and will be able to confirm the type of drive.

    Another example:


  2. In this article, we will attach the USB drive Migrations (D:)
  3. Click Start and type Computer Management
    Click Open
  4. Go to Disk Management
    1. Find your USB drive in the list of Disks
    2. Right click on it
    3. Click Offline
  5. Return to This PC and confirm the USB drive is no longer visible.
    Note: The drive must be offline on the host machine to connect it to the VM. If it's still visible, you won't be able to attach it to the VM.

  6. Open Hyper-V Manager
    1. Select the VM you want to connect the USB drive to.
    2. Select and right click Checkpoint (make sure you click on the checkpoint NOT on Now)
    3. Click Delete Checkpoint...
  7. Confirm to Delete the checkpoint
  8. Right click on the VM
    Click Settings
  9. In the Settings window:
    1. Select SCSI Controller
    2. Select Hard Drive
    3. Click Add
  10. This will add a new Hard Drive to the SCSI Controller Section.
    1. Select added Hard Drive
    2. Select Physical hard disk:
    3. Confirm the correct USB drive is selected
    4. Click Apply
  11. Click OK
  12. Open the VM you connected the USB drive to and navigate to This PC to confirm that USB drive is now showing as connected to the VM.

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