This may be of use to some users wanting access to usb storage devices that is not supported.
Using Linux as my host OS and as my virtual machine, I managed to access my usb flash drive by doing the following:
1. Have the usb drive plugged in and mounted on the host OS.
2.In the Virtual Machines Settings, add another hardware hard disk.
3. Configure VMWare it to use /dev/sdd (this will depend on your OS) and allow it to use the full disk without partitions. (I don't know if it will work if your drive is partitioned)
4. Power On the virtual machine.
5. Create a new folder in /mnt - in my case mkdir /mnt/usb (do this as sudo)
6. mount drive as follows: mount -o umask=0000 /dev/sdb /mnt/usb
The drive should now appear as a mounted drive.
A few points to note:
1. The virtual machine will not boot unless the usb device is plugged in.
2. Any new files written to the drive will not appear on the host machine until the write cache has been emptied. Use the following to force this:
hdparm -f /dev/sdb
3. Warning: Removing the usb device will cause the virtual machine to crash. Only remove the device after the vm machine is powered off.
I am a complete Linux newbie and I'm sure there is a better way to get around this, but it works well enough for me and may be of some use to others. Apologies for the lack of detail, my knowledge/experience is limited.
J.