I needed to make an
optical disc drive accessible to a Windows virtual
machine (VM) running in VirtualBox
on an Ubuntu
Linux system. The drive was attached to the host operating system
(OS) via a USB
connection. One way to make a USB optical drive connected to a Linux
host available to a Windows VM is to pass through the host optical
drive. With the VM running, I could select Devices and then
the optical drive connected to the host operating system, "Host Drive
PIONEER BD-RW BDR-XS07U (sr0)". Since I had seen a recommendation to
use a USB passthrough method instead, though, as while passing through
the host optical drive works well for ordinary CD/DVD access, unusual
discs or software that communicates directly with the hardware are less
likely to be problematic if one uses the USB passthrough method, instead,
I chose the USB passthrough option. To do so, I verified that the logged
in user account was in the vboxusers
group by issuing the command grep vboxusers /etc/group in
a terminal
window. If it isn't, you can add the account to that group using
sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER. I also verified that
the USB 3.0 Controller option was enabled by selecting the Windows 10
VM in VirtualBox and clicking on Settings and then selecting
USB. I then made the Pioneer Blu-ray drive accessible inside
the Windows VM by clicking on Devices at the top of the running
Windows VM window and then selecting Pioneer Corporation Pioneer
Blu-ray Drive [0100]. I then was able to see the blu-ray drive in
the Windows File
Explorer.
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