Man page documents qemu -drive if=scsi but it no longer works The qemu man page section documenting the -drive option contains if=interface This option defines on which type on interface the drive is connected. Available types are: ide, scsi, sd, mtd, floppy, pflash, virtio, none. but if=scsi no longer works as of version 2.12.0. If you really have to make backwards incompatible changes, it would be helpful if you could at least document them. The -drive if=scsi still works on the machines that have a SCSI bus by default. And the change for x86 has been documented in the ChangeLog: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/2.12