I've not used those types of drive before, but the front USB I've had issues with before.  For some reason, they do not provide as much bandwidth as the USB ports on the back.  Mainly because they have to be extended from the motherboard through cables and the back ones are onboard.

I've also heard rumors that some of the virtual machines either have a max limit on harddrive space.  I had a friend partition his external drive in half and that solved the problem.

Hope this helps.

I think I contaminated this blog with a virus targeting USB drives!  :-)

That would actually make sense that the front ports wouldn't have as much speed as the back.

I will do some more research to see if there is an upper limit on the hard drive space in a virtual machine.

Thanks!

@Joe, I guess I'll have to look in your posts to understand =)

Yeah, you shouldn't use high-powered devices from non-powered usb hubs.  The front usb ports are non-powered, so they are weak and should only be used for tiny devices like Mice.  (digital cameras may even have problems there).