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

windows linux virtual-machine
YankeeWhiskey picture YankeeWhiskey · Mar 21, 2012 · Viewed 38.4k times · Source

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

jianglai picture jianglai · Feb 27, 2013

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.

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