I know this may be too late for some but I’ posting this for the next person such as me that spent several hours to make this work to no avail and hope that it will help anyone still looking to resolve this issue as it seems to affect a lot of people. You may need to restart the computer and/or the virtual machine before the mounted USB device will work. Just download it from Oracle and then run it to let Virtualbox automatically add it. Still not working? Try installing the Virtualbox Extension Pack. If you have any questions, comments, or problems, please check out the Troubleshooting section below and leave a comment further down. And that is all there is to adding a physical USB device to your VirtualBox VM’s.

The USB device should now show up just as it would on your physical computer. Now go back into your VM window, and from the Host options, select Device > Usb Devices > “your USB device.” Once done, click OK to save changes and exit. Select the USB device that you wish to use from the list.

Within settings, browse to the USB tab and click the Add button on the very right of the window. Now go back to the VirtualBox Manager and right-click the VM that you want to use the USB device to open the Settings window. It’s straightforward to install these, just run the virtual machine, and then from the host window, select Device > Install Guest Additions… VirtualBox should load a virtual disk with the guest additions setup if it doesn’t run automatically, go into the virtual disk and launch the installer. For mounted USB devices to function, the virtual machine must have Guest Additions installed.

Virtualbox boot from usb linux host