How to mount an USB drive under VMWare ESXi 5.5?

I was able to make this happen by formatting the USB drive appropriately. as a FAT16 partition at 2GB or less (my example is 500MB)

In Windows, open a commmand prompt as admin and type diskpart:

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MIS-001

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB      0 B
  Disk 1    Online           29 GB      0 B

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary             29 GB  1024 KB

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> active

There is no partition selected.
Please select a partition and try again.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB      0 B
* Disk 1    Online           29 GB    29 GB

DISKPART> create part primary size=500

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> active

DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

DISKPART> format fs=fat quick

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> assign

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> exit

Also: /u/ewwhite Someone asked the question:

"Why are you trying to do this?"

In my case, I had to reinstall Network Drivers after failed hardware. I had no guest access, no host access, and no storage access after a hard failure of the host. Reinstalling NIC drivers via USB or CD was only way to update these blades.

Why are you trying to do this?

I have a whole bunch of operating system ISOs on an external drive that I'd like to use on my home ESXi 6 lab, but I can't mount them directly.

Here's what I did:

• Install Debian in a virtual machine
• Pass the drive you'd like to access to the Debian VM
• Mount the USB drive(s) in the VM, (for example, to /mnt/img0)
• Install nfs-kernel-server into the Debian machine

• Configure Debian's /etc/exports to point to /mnt/img0. For example, you could add the line:

  /mnt/img0 1.2.3.4(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,all_squash)

  • Replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address of your ESXi host
• In your virtual machine settings, add a new NFS datastore. Point it to the IP address if your Debian VM, leaving username and password blank if you used the sample /etc/exports above.

Now, you should be able to access the files on the USB drive as a datastore. It will also be mounted under /vmfs if you log into the ESXi host via ssh.

Admittedly, this is a lot of work to use a USB drive, but this worked in a pinch.