Guest OS Data Drive is inaccessible after ESXi Upgrade

[Suvadeep]

Hi,

Our client has updated their ESXi Servers using the ESXi offline bundle. The problem is after the update in VMs Guest OS data drive is inaccessible. We added additional disks to test it is showing in disk management we created a new volume and formatted it. But after that, we can't open the drive. Only the OS drive is accessible.

I saw an old similar post in their case it was GPO so I removed the server from the domain but it didn't work in our case. Any idea how to resolve this?

[NateNateNAte]

Are you able to share the basic configuration, such as ESXi version (from what older version to what newer version)?

Have you upgraded the VM machine version and VMTools yet for that particular VM?

[bluefirestorm]

Assuming the guest OS is some version of Windows, it is very likely there is a GPO that does not allow access to removable drives. Removing the VM from the domain does not guarantee that this policy is removed.

If you look at the system tray/notification area for "Eject" devices, you might see the Disks (and other devices as well) in the list that can be ejected.

You could add the following lines to the vmx configuration file.

ahci.port.hotplug.enabled = "FALSE"
devices.hotplug = "FALSE"

The first line is for SATA virtual disks; while the second line applies to other virtual disk types and other devices including the virtual NICs, etc.

After those two lines are added, the disks should no longer appear in the Eject list (therefore no longer has the removable attribute).