500gb MyBook external HDD and Virtual Machine

I am wondering if anyone else has had experience with attempting to recognize a 500gb Western Digital MyBook HDD in either VirtualBox or VMWare.

I have been trying to get my ubuntu guest OS to see the drive for 2 hours or so and I can’t get it to work. Not even an error or anything. I know these drives are notorious for being a pain so I think it may actually be the drive.

Weird part is, it has to be plugged into a specific USB port in the back of my machine to work in Windows XP. It won’t work in the front two ports which is kind of strange. I believe that this external drive is just bricked.