Virtualbox looses track of USB SSD

[TheStudent]

I've encountered a big glitch. If I create a virtual machine with no virtual drive, and then use a USB filter to attach a USB SSD (WD Passport if it matters) to the virtual machine, then it will find that drive no problem for ONLY the first powercycle. Rebooting without powering down the machine makes no difference. But if you power the machine down (not save state, actually set the machine as turned off), then try to turn it on again, it won't find the SSD. It boots into the EFI shell, and the EFI shell reports no file systems, or it reports the Optical Disc file system if there is one. But it doesn't see the USB drive. The only way I've been able to fix this is to completely delete the machine and re-create from scratch. That's annoying and stupid!