Connecting USB devices to a virtual machine.
If you want to use a USB device on a VMware virtual machine, you have to consider: 1. the USB version, the device is supposed to work with (there are USB1, USB2 and USB3 flash drives); 2. the USB version that is supported by an adequate driver on the guest operating system (Windows releases before Windows 2000 don't have USB2 support by default).
USB is backward compatible, so there shouldn't be a problem to connect a USB2 flash drive to a USB3 controller. The contrary is not true! If the virtual machine has a USB2 controller (because there isn't a USB3 driver for the OS that runs on it), you must use a USB2 flash drive! Trying to connect a USB3 device will result in a warning message issued by VMware Workstation, that says device unable to connect to its ideal host controller. The message also says that VMware will try to connect the device to the best available controller, but warns that this might result in serious problems.
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I never succeeded to use a USB3 flash drive on a VM with a USB2 host controller. The flash device never showed up in the VM, neither in Disk Management, nor in File Explorer.
What can we do? Two possibilities: Either changing the USB version of the controller in the virtual machine's settings, or finding a device intended to work with the USB version of the controller. The first possibility requires that we have (or find) a driver for this device with this USB version on the concerned operating system. I don't think that there are any USB3 drivers for the old Windows releases; thus, there is no way to use our USB3 flash drive on Windows 98 or 2000. The second possibility requires to have (or to find) a device that works with a less recent USB version. USB2 flash drives are still available for sale in computer shops. To work with USB on OS like Windows 95 or Windows Me (there aren't any USB2 drivers for these operating systems), would require a USB1 flash drive. Probably not impossible to find in second hand shops or on eBay...
If you need information about USB on Windows 9x, NT4, 2000, XP, my article Using USB devices on the old Windows releases may be helpful.
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