How to enable Hyper-V USB passthrough and access USB in Hyper-V
Contents
- What is Hyper-V USB passthrough
- How to access USB in Hyper-V - a software method
- How to access USB from Hyper-V over a Remote Desktop Connection
- How to enable USB device in Hyper-V with the Enhanced Session Mode
What we gained with the development of virtualization technology is the much-desired ability to create a virtual version of computer hardware, including computing, storage, and networking resources. However, connecting to such physical resources as USB devices can still be a real challenge for users of virtual machines. In this guide, we’ll consider several simple methods to enable Hyper-V USB passthrough so that your VM can work with any USB devices attached to the host computer.
What is Hyper-V USB passthrough
The Hyper-V USB passthrough functionality allows you to access the USB device from within a virtual machine. But what if you need to get access to a USB device plugged into your local PC but find out that the Hyper-V environment doesn’t natively support USB passthrough? Well, as you may know, Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor, which means one operating system instance locks a USB port from all other OS instances. Therefore, it may not assign a USB port to a particular guest. Thankfully, there are several popular ways to enable Hyper-V USB support and now we’ll take a closer look at each of them.