Normally, You cannot boot from USB Thumbdrive in Vmware Workstation because when you restart your VMware machine all the external hd, thumbdrive, automatically disconnect from your machine...
So thats it means you cannot boot from USB thumbdrive in Vmware workstation, answer is nope. You can boot your USB thumbdrive but you need special tool that is "Plop Boot Manager", you can download it from their Official website http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html:
- Download Plop Boot Manager.
- Extract Plop Boot Manager iso image file from archive compressed file.
- Go to the VMware Machine setting, then go for Cd/DVD(IDE) then tick options "Connected" & "Connect at power ON" and browse the Plop Boot Manager iso image under "Use iso image file" option.
- Then Click OK to save setting and Start your VMware machine.
- During Startup boot VMware from CD.
- Plop Boot Manager starts and then go for usb by using of arrow of keyboard.
- Now You can boot USB thumbdrive in VMware workstation.
