Virtual ReadyNAS 6.10.8 UI not displaying any external USB drive

It is pretty straight forward to deploy a virtual ReadyNAS 6.10.8 within ESXi once the available virtual disk image (6.6.0) was converted to ESXi format. The image provided by Netgear is a vmware workstation format. To convert, using this command once you are in the directory of where the Netgear image is located:

vmkfstools -i ReadyNASOS.vmdk ReadyNASOS_thick.vmdk -d zeroedthick

To implement that, please bear in mind the following: 

1. Guest OS: linux debian 8 64bit
2. Enable USB 3 despite saying not supported
3. Network adapter e1000E
4. add a USB devices, making sure you choose the right one. 

There are a number of limitations to the virtual ReadyNAS. one is the limit of the hard drive to be 20Gb. The other is the trimmed down UI. It will not display the external USB drives. It does not auto-mount either (no hot plug-and-play). 

By default, the USB device is mounted under /media/. You can manually create a mount-point under media and mount it. It just won't show it in the UI. 

I am hoping the almighy eton to figure this out after having accomplished a similar impossible. 

I believe the cold backup to a USB drive is the safest and easy to recover. The backup function of the ReadyNAS is the most straight forward. The virtual ReadyNAS can do the backup to USB just like a real ReadyNAS. it has the ReadyDR as well. The ReadyDR works with the real ReadyNAS well.