I'm trying to get my Windows 7 Home Premium installation in VMWare to see external USB drives. I've tested with a LaCie Rugged Mini and with a Western Digital My Passport, both USB 3.0, both compatible with USB 2.0. When I plug one in, I get the message from Fusion:
"The device "Western Digital My Passport 0740" was unable to connect to its ideal host controller.
An attempt will be made to connect this device to the best available host controlle. This may result in an undefined behavior for this device.
Then after I ok that message, Windows reports:
USB Device not recognized.
One of the USB devices connected to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click here.
After clicking that, the drive is shown as Unknown device, and the advice is to disconnect an reconnect it (which always gives the same result. Searching for drivers within Windows does not help.
Uninstalling and reinstalling VMWare Tools does not help.
Switching between the two drives, two USB cables, and two USB ports does not help.
Removing and readding the USB card to the machine does not help.
Setting the USB card to USB 3.0 makes the virtual machine refuse to boot at all.
Hardware is a Retina display MacBook Pro, running 10.7.4, drives are set to show up in Windows, not Mac. Any ideas? I'm at a loss. Other USB devices seem to work fine, just no luck with hard drives.