You plug in a pen drive and your virtual machine cannot see it - because your real PC grabbed it first. USB passthrough is the art of handing a device from host to guest, and once you know the one rule behind it, every USB device story in VMware makes sense.
The one rule: a USB device belongs to exactly one machine at a time - your host, or your VM, never both together. Connecting a device to the guest means the host lets go of it, and disconnecting hands it back. Everything on this page - the menus, the pop-ups, the disappearing pen drive - is that rule wearing different clothes. Add the USB 3.2 support in the 25H2 release and modern devices run at proper speed once handed over.
Plug the device in and let the host finish noticing it. Then, in Workstation, open the VM menu, go to Removable Devices, find the device by name and choose Connect (Disconnect from host). The guest's own plug-and-play sounds play, the device appears inside the VM, and - this is the rule working - it vanishes from your host. First connection of a device type may need a moment while the guest installs its driver, exactly as on a real PC.
Workstation can ask where a new device should go, or remember your choice per device. For a security dongle that licensed software inside the VM needs, remembering is perfect - it connects to the guest every time. For your everyday pen drive, leave the question on: sometimes the files are for the host, sometimes for the VM, and the pop-up is cheaper than digging through menus to steal the device back.
Open VM, then Removable Devices, and choose Disconnect (Connect to host) - or simply shut the VM down, which returns everything. Inside the guest, eject a storage device before disconnecting it, the same discipline as a real machine: a pen drive pulled mid-write corrupts just as happily in a VM as outside one.
Speed: the VM's USB controller setting must match the device - give the VM a USB 3.x controller for fast drives, which 25H2 supports up to USB 3.2; a fast SSD on a virtual USB 2 controller crawls at old speeds. Phones can reconnect themselves when they switch modes - charging to file transfer looks like a new device arriving. Some dongles and hardware keys are timing-sensitive and dislike any virtualisation; if licensed software cannot see its dongle in the VM, that is a known shape of problem, and the vendor's own guidance decides it. Boot devices: a VM can boot from USB media, but for routine installs mounting the ISO directly is faster and saner.
If all you need is files from a pen drive inside the VM, you may not need passthrough at all: leave the drive on the host and use a VMware shared folder or drag and drop - both arrive with VMware Tools. Passthrough is for when the guest needs the device itself: the dongle, the adapter, the phone in debugging mode. Choosing the lighter tool keeps the host's access to the drive and avoids the ownership shuffle entirely.
Watch devices move between host and guest in the video, and see the Removable Devices menu used the calm way.
Watch Full VideoBecause it worked. Connecting a USB device to a guest disconnects it from the host - one device, one owner. The files are safe; the drive is simply visible only inside the VM until you disconnect it from the guest or shut the VM down.
No. USB passthrough is exclusive by design. If both sides need the files, keep the device on the host and share its contents into the guest with a VMware shared folder - sharing data is simultaneous, sharing the device is not.
Usually the VM's USB controller is set to an older standard, so the device negotiates down to that speed. Power off the VM and set its USB controller to the USB 3.x option - supported up to USB 3.2 in Workstation Pro 25H2 - and make sure the drive is plugged into a fast port on the host as well.