Is it possible to pass through a SATA DVD drive connected over a USB interface?

BigDogge

New Member
Mar 21, 2022
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I have an ASUS BR/DVD/CD reader/writer which I'd like to pass to a Windows 10 guest for use with Exact Audio Copy. However, the drive is connected using a SATA to USB adaptor. So at first, I tried passing through the USB, but it would only let me read files with Windows Explorer, EAC didn't read the drive, and I couldn't even use eject.

So I did see the drive is presented as a SCSI device on the host, and I can see it at
Code:
/dev/sr0
and
Code:
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_123456789B75-0:0

So I was trying to search for ways I could pass through a SCSI device, but only found info on hard drives. Tried anyway using:
Code:
qm set 104 -scsi3 "/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_123456789B75-0:0"

Which gives this error:
Code:
qemu-img: Could not open '/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_123456789B75-0:0': Could not read image for determining its format: Input/output error
could not parse qemu-img info command output for '/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_123456789B75-0:0' - malformed JSON string, neither tag, array, object, number, string or atom, at character offset 0 (before "(end of string)") at /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/Plugin.pm line 886.

volume /dev/disk/by-id/usb-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_123456789B75-0:0 does not exist

I feel like this may not be easily possible though
 
Optical drives don't work with the normal hard disk passthrough, because that only works for block devices with random access.
I use a (JMicron USB 2.0) convertor to connect my SATA Blu-ray burner to different Linux VMs (one at a time) by plugging it into a passed through USB ports or ports on a passed through USB controller. This works fine and allows me to use it for reading and writing video and audio discs as well as files. I don't understand why it does not work in your case.
You could try iSCSI to share the optical drive but I could not get that to work reliable in my system.
The "use physical drive" option only works for discs with normal files. There are some threads on this forum about getting optical drives/burners to work with VMs.
 
Optical drives don't work with the normal hard disk passthrough, because that only works for block devices with random access.
I use a (JMicron USB 2.0) convertor to connect my SATA Blu-ray burner to different Linux VMs (one at a time) by plugging it into a passed through USB ports or ports on a passed through USB controller. This works fine and allows me to use it for reading and writing video and audio discs as well as files. I don't understand why it does not work in your case.
You could try iSCSI to share the optical drive but I could not get that to work reliable in my system.
The "use physical drive" option only works for discs with normal files. There are some threads on this forum about getting optical drives/burners to work with VMs.
Useful knowledge, thanks!

I'm guessing yours works because it just is different. Looks like then iSCSI may be the solution here if I really want to make this work, though busting out my old laptop might be a simpler, or perhaps even a USB PCIe device, but I don't think I've got the lanes and groups left for that :)
 

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