Getting XP mode apps to treat usb drive as Connected

etsauer · 14 Oct 2009

Hi,

I recently installed windows xp mode on my windows 7 installation. I also often use acronis true image 9.1 to image disks. I have a USB connected SATA drive bay that I use for imaging the drives, and I am wondering if there is a way to configure it automatically treat that device as connected instead of shared. I would like to be able to launch the app from my desktop instead of having to start the virtual PC every time. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Eric

aem · 14 Oct 2009

It should be integrated into the VPC. what drives you can on your physical machines can be seen on your VPC.

etsauer · 14 Oct 2009

Yes, but they show up as mapped drives, which true image can't see. I can remedy this by selecting the device in the USB menu to change it from a shared to a connected device. This essentially uninstalls the usb device from windows 7 and reinstalls it as some kind of usb virtualization, then it installs asa connected device on windows xp. I would like to set it so that it always does this by default for that device. Can anyone think of a way this can happen?

Night Hawk · 15 Oct 2009

Any custom setups involving usb HDs as well as usb flash drives always ends up being temporary especially once the XP Mode or any other OS on a virtual machine is involved. The one constant seen here with usb flash drives is being able to assign a logical drive letter to each flash drive set up for a different purpose while external HDs were moved internally as storage/backup drives.

For one external 1tb HD I simply pulled it out right out of the external casing as soon as I had it. For imaging the OS drive a second partition from the primary or another internal HD is the recommendation for that. For the program used that's a constant while usb configurations tend to be too fragile and can change between restarts or shutdowns and power ups.

With the XP mode itself each startup is a new experience in a variety of ways there. Setups work while the present session is running and lost with the next where you have to start all over again. The integration there is to allow access to drives and devices while in session when running older apps on the virtual machine. Most things are simply reset once the session ends and the next one is started.