Here are more details about my solution where Whonix Workstation on Virtualbox would not even detect a USB drive, so I had no opportunity to mount it manually (since we all know auto mount doesn’t work well).
- first, I ran this command line on my host OS Ubuntu 14.04: sudo usermod -aG vboxusers
- then when I started Whonix I saw the USB was finally detected.
- then I followed the instructions on the post below - use the terminal to create new folders to mount the drive, use Gparted to know the exact location of the USB, then use terminal again to run the manual mount commands.
Whonix Forum
Notes:
- one small tricky part of Gparted is you must use the “Gparted” selection on the menu bar to toggle from the default view of the Workstation partitions to find the USB drive partition.
- since only one OS at a time can control the USB drive, when you run your host, Gateway, and Workstation at the same time, you will see control of the USB will switch back and forth between the OSs when you connect or eject the USB.