USB Disk on ESXi 4.0

ESXi 4.0 supports only two file formats: vmfs and FAT16
So no NTFS or EXTs

FAT16 partitions are automatically mounted by the OS in /vmfs/volumes
directory.

Since the FAT16 has a limit of 4GB it is pretty 'useless' for any VMDK
to be stored as a backup.

You can make 4 partitions of 4GB in size on one USB stick or USB disk.

Then you can do something like this:

ln -s /vmfs/volumes/[partition-name] /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/disks/[partition-name].vmdk

There are steps on the internet how to install a different file system on ESX (not the ESXi !)

Another approach was to make a disk duplicate of the install disk where VMFS was avaible.

Unfortunately the UUID was copied as well and when the system boots it detects this.

These steps involve chaning the UUID of a disk but I still was unable to get it to work with

VMFS:
http://itooktheredpill.dyndns.org/2010/change-uuid-of-a-mdadm-partition/

Another idea I had was to install ESXi on two disks:

Removed USB Disk case and got the IDE disk out.

- Install ESXi on the -usbdisk- IDE disk

- Swap disk for another IDE disk (the original in my ESXi machine)

- Install ESXi on the current IDE disk

- Attache the IDE to an USB interface and boot the server 

The result was that a VMFS was on the USB disk but it was not mounted.
Even when I attach both disks to the IDE bus and formatted the second
disk using VSphere client the disk was not mounted once it was hooked up
on the usb bus.
FAT16 works on the USBStorage chain, but VMFS was not!

ESX 4.0 Supports direct passthrough USB storage when your motherboards supports
it. Unfortunately mine did not!