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VMWare Workstation 11, OS X Yosemite, and USB 3.0


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So I've been successfully running Yosemite (10.10.5) under Workstation 11 for the last 6-8 months. Recently I added a USB 3.0 external drive for some data portability. In Workstation 11, I discovered that I need to have USB compatibility set to "USB 2.0" in order for my (Dell) keyboard to work. If I set it to USB 3.0, the mouse works fine but the keyboard stops working (it's just a standard $8 keyboard).

 

Anyway, as a result, access to my external drive is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix things so that I can get USB 3.0 speeds? 

 

Can I modify things so that the keyboard & mouse are "connected" via USB 2 while the disk drive is connected via USB 3? How do I do that?

 

Alternately, would upgrading to Workstation 12 solve this issue? I am reluctant to pay for the upgrade since Workstation 11 has been running fine so far.

 

Advice welcome.

 

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  • 5 months later...

Using shared folders is a reasonable workaround, but it doesn't solve the problem. I want to use USB 3.0 devices at their full speed under OS X guest on VMWare Workstation 12. Shared folders is fine for disk drives but it doesn't solve the issue for other peripherals.

 

Secondly, using Shared folder requires that I pick a filesystem that can be natively read and written by the Host OS (Windows in my case). That means FAT or exFAT.

 

<sigh> Oh well. And with the VMWare team having been disbanded, it's unlikely we'll ever see this supported properly.

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FYI the VMware team has not been disbanded. The USA teams that built the UI for Workstation and Fusion were laid off, but the work was moved to VMware China. The issues you have would be a different team that works on the core virtualization engine.

 

I will take a look at this and see if there is an answer to having the 2 different USB ports available. Can you attach the VMX file for tour VM please? (Do not copy and paste to post as makes it difficult to read).

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How do you know it's running at USB 2.0 speed?  Did you benchmark it?

 

Workstation 12 with ElCapitan as guest can connect USB 3.0 devices to the guest using stock Apple USB 3.0 drivers in the guest.

I don't know about the combinations

Wks 12 + Yosemite

Wks 11 + ElCapitan

 

Update:

The VMware USB 3 controller in Wks 12 has vendor ID 0x15ad device ID 0x779 which I believe is the same device ID as in Wks 11.  So it's probably the guest drivers in ElCapitan that have changed, and not the VMware backend.

 

ElCapitan is unusably sluggish running in Wks 12 - but maybe it's just my system or maybe I have something set up wrong.

 

So I've been successfully running Yosemite (10.10.5) under Workstation 11 for the last 6-8 months. Recently I added a USB 3.0 external drive for some data portability. In Workstation 11, I discovered that I need to have USB compatibility set to "USB 2.0" in order for my (Dell) keyboard to work. If I set it to USB 3.0, the mouse works fine but the keyboard stops working (it's just a standard $8 keyboard).

 

Anyway, as a result, access to my external drive is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix things so that I can get USB 3.0 speeds? 

 

Can I modify things so that the keyboard & mouse are "connected" via USB 2 while the disk drive is connected via USB 3? How do I do that?

 

Alternately, would upgrading to Workstation 12 solve this issue? I am reluctant to pay for the upgrade since Workstation 11 has been running fine so far.

 

Advice welcome.

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Using shared folders is a reasonable workaround, but it doesn't solve the problem. I want to use USB 3.0 devices at their full speed under OS X guest on VMWare Workstation 12. Shared folders is fine for disk drives but it doesn't solve the issue for other peripherals.

 

Secondly, using Shared folder requires that I pick a filesystem that can be natively read and written by the Host OS (Windows in my case). That means FAT or exFAT.

 

<sigh> Oh well. And with the VMWare team having been disbanded, it's unlikely we'll ever see this supported properly.

 

 

 

As long as you can install VMware Tools, you don't need to care about the type of your file system. Remember that the Shared Folder is a feature officially supported by VMware Tools.

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As long as you can install VMware Tools, you don't need to care about the type of your file system. Remember that the Shared Folder is a feature officially supported by VMware Tools.

Good point. It is using essentially network sharing approach so is not dependent on the actual filing system. So long as the host can read it so can the Shared Folders.

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There is a 3rd path to try - which is to create a new virtual hard disk, and choose the "Use physical disk" option to base it on a partition.  I've tried this successfully in the past with MBR HFS partition that was unrecognizable by the host OS (guess which :)).  However, I later tried it with GPT HFS partition - and that didn't work.

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I tried to switch to USB 3.0 for my virtual machine (OS X 10.11) this morning. My wireless USB mouse was no longer working. VMware also informed that "Using USB devices with a USB 3.0 controller may require additional drivers to be installed in the guest".

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I tried to switch to USB 3.0 for my virtual machine (OS X 10.11) this morning. My wireless USB mouse was no longer working. VMware also informed that "Using USB devices with a USB 3.0 controller may require additional drivers to be installed in the guest".

 

It does work with USB 3 on Workstation 12 on Windows host. Not tried Linux yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Donk, thanks for taking a look at my *.vmx file. I am attaching it here.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jo71c6tzzc289fx/OSXGuest.vmx?dl=0

 

I had a similar problem as trungpt when trying USB3 in OSX. My mouse (and keyboard too maybe) stopped working. Interestingly, when I go to my guest settings and choose the USB Controller, it only lists USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 compatibility. It no longer lists 3.0 as an option. I can maybe get a screen shot if someone needs to see it for themselves.

 

I'm running Workstation Pro 12.1.0.

 

Regarding VMware Tools, I do have them installed. I can see disks but I want to be able to disconnect these USB3 drives and move them to another Mac (my laptop). So VMWare Tools and folder sharing really doesn't help with that since the Host OS is Windows and can't read HFS+. I'd prefer to not use exFAT because of its limitations with some of the files I would store on the drive (e.g. git repositories).

 

Any help is appreciated.

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