Convert a USB drive into a Virtual Machine HDD
You can use VBoxManage, it comes with VirtualBox.
This'll create "transparent" virtual disk, which gives you direct access to specified device.
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename mydrive.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0
Look here for more examples: http://www.sysprobs.com/access-physical-disk-virtualbox-desktop-virtualization-software
for those wanting to convert the drive instead of using a transparent virtual disk, or link... (took me around 20 minutes to convert a 32GB USB drive to vmdk)
VBoxManage convertfromraw \\.\PhysicalDrive2 D:\VirtualMachines.vmdk --format vmdk
- *\.\PhysicalDrive = number of your USB drive found in Disk Management
- *D:\VirtualMachines = this is the path I used. can be anywhere.
- *.vmdk / --format vmdk = the extension and chosen format should match.