I use TrueNAS (ZFS) as my main NAS, and Windows workstations. I regularly make offline backups to a spinning hard drive using my workstations. I currently use Robocopy to do this. This works okay, except for the fact that if I ever do have to recover a large amount of data from the drive, it's going to have to go over the network.

I'd like to be able to pass the entire drive to a Linux VM so I can format the backup drive with ZFS. That way, if I ever have to recover the data, I can just stick that drive into the NAS and move the data from inside the machine, instead of over the network.

Other than passing the entire controller, is there a way to pass a single physical drive to a virtual machine in Virtualbox?

I seem to remember trying this at one point, but didn't really use it...

https://www.serverwatch.com/guides/how-to-use-a-physical-hard-drive-with-a-virtualbox-vm/