Virtual machine technology allows adding new devices to a virtual machine to be like connecting new devices to a real computer. Virtual machine configuration can include the following devices:
New devices are added using Add Hardware Wizard. Device of any type (except hard disks) can be connected to a real drive as well as to virtual media. In addition, if you add a floppy drive, a new blank .fdd
image can be created at the same time and connected to the drive. When adding virtual hard disk you may choose between connecting an existing hard disk image and creating a new one.
Note: In Linux primary OS to be able to connect any virtual device to a real one, you should have system privileges to access the real device. Otherwise, the real device will not appear in the list of available devices despite it is installed on your computer.
To add a new device to the virtual machine do the following:
The Available Hardware list contains devices available for adding. If the VM configuration already includes the maximum allowed number of a particular device type, this device type will not appear in the Available Hardware list. For instance, only one floppy drive is allowed.
The wizard allows you to add only one device at a time.
On this screen you may prefer to add devices immediately without specifying its options, in order to save time (You may set options later in the Configuration Editor). To do so, click the Add device instantly button after selecting the desired device. The new device is added immediately with standard options, and some of them are not set at all (for example, the instant hard disk has a size of zero).
To set the options of the device being added click the Next button.
Follow the wizard screens to configure the new device. You should select the device type, the media it is connected to, and the options specific to the device and media type. All of them are described under the Editing Virtual Machine Configuration section. The last options screen contains the Finish button.
Note that not all operating systems are able to recognize a newly added device, use the guest operating system means to make a new device visible to the guest OS.