When adding a new virtual hard disk to a Windows guest OS, the drive cannot be accessed from within Windows Explorer.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 6.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• When adding a new virtual hard disk to a Windows guest OS the drive appears in Windows Disk Management.
• The new virtual hard drive can be initialized using GPT or MBR.
• The new virtual hard drive can be formatted using NTFS or ReFS and assigned a drive letter.
• When attempting to access the new virtual hard drive from Windows Explorer, you receive an access denied error message:

Location is not available

X:\ is not accessible

Access is denied

Environment

VMware ESXi 6.x
VMware ESXi 7.x
VMware ESXi 8.x

Cause

This is caused by the guest operating system and/or security software installed on it preventing interaction with the new virtual hard drive.  The guest OS and/or security software sees the new virtual hard drives as portable devices presented to the guest OS as per the Windows Device Manager:

Resolution

As a workaround for Windows guest operating systems, you can follow the steps outlined in KB 367422 to mask the guest OS from seeing removable devices.

Additional Information

Disabling the HotAdd/HotPlug capability in virtual machines