ResScan on Windows under VMWare on a Mac - whither the SD Card Reader?

[allanri]

Hi all ... I have a MacBook Pro on which I run VMWare Fusion to run Windows 8. I'd like to try the ResScan software (which is available only for Windows), but I can't figure out how to get ResScan to "see" the SD card reader on my computer.  I can share the contents of an SD card as a MacOS volume from the Fusion settings, however, to Windows, it looks like just another folder.  I think ResScan is looking for an actual (physical or virtual) card reader, not a folder. Has anyone else tried to do this?

[Crimson Nape]

I use Virtualbox, so I'm hoping VMware has the same options.  There is a configuration option to allow a virtual machine to have access to local devices.  The SD card may just show up as a drive letter without any notification when inserted.

[allanri]

I checked on the VMWare site ... apparently an SDXC card slot on a Mac cannot be used by a VM because it is connected to the PCIe bus, and not the USB bus.

[Crimson Nape]

Bummer! How about using a USB-SD reader? They cost next to nothing.

[mdhampton]

I use a USB card reader connected to a USBC adapter, but no experience with windows on Mac, I have MacBook Pro with only USBC; Not sure what your MacBook has, but get a cheap SD card reader and it should be OK.

[allanri]

I’ll give it a try!

[jaswilliams]

I am not sure it’s relevant or possible with a windows vm on Apple but I use imdisk in windows to create a virtual removable drive on my windows machine I use this to store my data and resscan uses this like a regular sd card.


I can provide further details (I am on my tablet so don’t have details of the cmd’s Used) I use a cmd file to check is the virtual sd mounted if not mount it and then start sleepy/resscan etc. I use this as I have a lightweight laptop and an SD card sticks out too far to leave inserted at all times.


The code is below it first checks if the settings file exists (if it exists then Virtual SD is mounted) if it does not exist mount my virtual SD card as d:\ with the -o rem makes the disk removable so resscan can find it, then copy and import my data using Flashpap but the start option could be changed to launch ResScan

if not exist D:\STR.edf imdisk -a -f "C:\Virtual Disks\SleepyHead SD.raw" -m D:\ -o rem
start C:\FlashPAP\FlashPAP.jar user=S9HomeWifi exit=yes startapp=yes shimport=yes

[allanri]

I will have to try this after I get my FlashAir SD card ... Thanks!

[jaswilliams]

I will have to try this after I get my FlashAir SD card ... Thanks!

You could still copy the files of the SD card to the Mac and then copy them into the VM/Virtual SD card from a shared location on the mac, so you can use Resscan

[slicer127]

I am not sure it’s relevant or possible with a windows vm on Apple...

First post!

Resurrecting an old thread, just to confirm I have indeed found this to be possible with a Win7 VM on an Apple VirtualBox host.

This imdisk solution is the only one I have found which satisfies ResScan. (Spent hours trying to get VirtualBox to recognise the Apple SD card reader, to no avail.)

Should be pretty easy to create a Windows batch file which overwrites all new / current data from a shared folder into the imdisk — I figure the imdisk data is sacrificial as the Mac shared folder (and ultimately the SD card) will always be the authoritative "source of truth".

Good show @jaswilliams.