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I recently discovered a stash of old flash drives, and I'm not sure what they contain or if they're even safe to open. I also recently learned about Oracle VM Virtualbox and how they are completely separate virtual computers. I'd like to know if it's possible to insert a flash drive into a Virtual Machine running Ubuntu 20.04.3 and have ONLY the VM detect it so that I can safely open the flash drive and view its contents, and if so, how.

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Inserting the flash drive into your host machine's USB port will auto-mount it, but making it available to the guest will automatically unmount it from the host.

For the guest to use USB, it must have installed the VirtualBox guest additions, and the user must be added to the vboxusers group.

You need to pay attention to the USB controller you add to the VM. VirtualBox default is USB Controller 1.1 (OHCI), but modern hardware uses USB Controller 2.0 (EHCI) and USB Controller 3.0 (xHCI).

Assigning the USB is done using VirtualBox Manager in the Settings window of the VM, USB tab, by clicking the Add button and selecting the USB device.

For more information see the articel How to Mount Physical USB Devices in a VirtualBox VM.

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  • "..but making it available to the guest will automatically unmount it from the host." Will it prevent my computer from getting infected if I open a potentially infected Flash Drive from my Virtual Machine?
    – Joshua Balles
    Dec 13, 2021 at 9:07
  • Virtual machine isolation from the host is one of the main reasons for using it. Just do not expose the host to the guest, for example by not creating shared folders.
    – harrymc
    Dec 13, 2021 at 9:13

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