Boot a native OS on a hard disk as a virtual machine

Question

I'm searching for a solution to boot a native OS on a hard disk as a virtual machine.

It's like what VMware Fusion did on a Mac which boots Windows in Boot Camp as a virtual machine.

In detail, I have Windows installed on /dev/sda2 and Ubuntu 11.10 on /dev/sda5.

Is there anyway to use a virtual machine software to boot the Windows on /dev/sda2 as a virtual machine while I'm using Ubuntu?

Answer 1

Yes, I did this long ago following this guide:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-nm/2008-February/000521.html

of course, always backup and be careful!

Essentially:

1. Used a USB 3.5 HD enclosure and connect the XP drive to it.

   If the drive was shutdown uncleanly you may need to manually  

mount it with the following command.

   sudo mount ntfs-3g /dev/whereyourdriveis /mount/somemountpoint -o  

force

   Once the drive is mounted under linux contiunue to step 2. 

2. Launch VMWare.
3. Go to File -> New -> New Virtual Machine.
4. Select "Custom"
5. Select Next
6. Select your operating system (i.e. Win XP)
7. Select Next
8. Give it a name like "WindowsXP"
9. Select Next
10. Specify processor One or Two
11. Select Next
12. Choose public or private (on a single-user machine this doesn't matter)
13. Select Next
14. Select the memory to devote to the virtual machine. 512 MB is a pretty useful number.
15. Select your network connection
16. Select Next.
17. Leave SCSI set to BusLogic
18. Select Next
19. Select Use Physical Disk
20. Select Next
21. Select Use Entire Drive
22. Select Next
23. Specify the place to save the VM
24. At this point you're done Select Power On to boot the Physical drive in VMWare!

More Info: I should add, I have successfully done this, but I also had success using this method years even years before. So there are at least two known and tested ways for accomplishing this that I can tell you.

Answer 2

You can do this via VirtualBox raw disk access. (http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html) It basically creates a "virtual" disk file that points to the actual partition and loads it as a disk drive in the VM. I've installed Linux guest in VB on Windows host in such a way, and the installation can boot from the VM or by itself.