vmdk for USB disk works only first time

[Chelmite]

I created a vmdk for an external hard drive. I was able to run a VB session once. At the end of the session, I went throught the shutdown procedure. The next day, I plugged in the hard drive, checked (via gnome-disks) that the drive and its partitions are visible but not mounted on the host. I then started virtualbox, and got the message:

One or more virtual hard disks, CD/DVD or floppy disk image files are not currently accessible. As a result, you will not be able to operate virtual machines that use these files until they become accessible later.

The Virtual Media Manager flags the vmdk with an error: Could not open the medium '/local/me/.../sda-full.vmdk'. VD: error VERR_ACCESS_DENIED opening image file '/local/me/.../sda-full.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED)

The directory and file mentioned in the error message are owned by me and group vboxusers: -rw-rw---- 1 me vboxusers 629 Mar 27 14:08 sda-full.vmdk The device, /dev/sda has permissions:

brw-rw-rw- 1 root disk 8, 0 Mar 21 22:42 /dev/sda brw-rw-rw- 1 root disk 8, 1 Mar 21 22:42 /dev/sda1 brw-rw-rw- 1 root disk 8, 2 Mar 21 22:42 /dev/sda2

I created the vmdk with the command: % sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Project/sda-full.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sdc % chown me ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Project/sda-full.vmdk

My host is Ubuntu 13.10, the guest is Redhat 8.0.

[Chelmite]

VBox.log file

[Chelmite]

VBoxSVC.log file

[Chelmite]

Screen-shot of error message

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.