So I have in my hand an external USB drive - a Maxtor 2Tb M3 portable.
Up to last month it was working fine as a USB drive on my Windows server hosted on VMware esxi 5.5 which was loaded back in 2013.
I have just finished a long round of upgrading server firmware and VMware to the latest ESXi 5.5 - now on 5.5.5 3568722
And now the drive doesn't work. It appears as a USB device that I can add in settings (as a Seagate drive), but doesn't appear in Windows at all.
I have uninstalled/installed the USB and the USB xHCI controllers individually and together. I have also tried in passthrough DirectPath I/O mode.
So my only conclusion is that VM have made this drive incompatible in this upgrade. Seems unlikely but is this a known issue?
thanks