VirtualBox WindowsXP guest on SATA drive?

RickKnight · Post by **RickKnight** » 28. Jul 2007, 00:17

I have been trying to get VMware to work for me but I've run into a big problem that I hope VirtualBox can solve. VMware will support a physical partition as an image, but only on an IDE or SCSI drive. I have a SATA drive and VMware does not currently support a physical partition as image on SATA devices, nor do they have plans to do so in the near future. Can VirtualBox do this. I have a Dual boot machine with Kubuntu Feisty 7.04 and Windows XP Pro. I work mostly in linux, but need to boot Windows XP for certain applications. Will VirtualBox let me mount my Windows XP Pro physical partition on a SATA drive as an image?

Thanks,
Rick Knight

Post by **stefan.becker** » 28. Jul 2007, 14:33

Its not a good idea to boot native windows.

Double hardware profile, new activation etc.

RickKnight · Post by **RickKnight** » 28. Jul 2007, 21:02

Stefan, Thanks for reply.

I understand the problem with activation and such, but I have an enetrprise license for both XP and Office 2003 so that won't be much of an issue. I have very limited space to work with, not enough space for a complete re-install of WinXp and the few apps I need. I don't have enough space to create an image from the real drive, so I would like to use the real drive as the image. Can VirtualBox do this?

Thanks again,
Rick

storeitoffsite · Post by **storeitoffsite** » 29. Jul 2007, 15:22

RickKnight wrote:Stefan, Thanks for reply.

I understand the problem with activation and such, but I have an enetrprise license for both XP and Office 2003 so that won't be much of an issue. I have very limited space to work with, not enough space for a complete re-install of WinXp and the few apps I need. I don't have enough space to create an image from the real drive, so I would like to use the real drive as the image. Can VirtualBox do this?

Thanks again,
Rick

Sorry to butt in, but I was just browsing and thought I would respond... doing this would mean that XP would have to reconfigure itself entirely each time you boot into the VM or the real device, becasue the drive sets are different. How big is the real partition and how much space is used on the partition? Have you thought about imaging the partition to an inexpensive device like USB key or USB external drive, then removing and mount the space under the host OS, then build an image back to a gust image file? I haven't tried this BUT have inquired about it. In theory it works and I'll probably test this at some point.

Just throwing out options...

RickKnight · Post by **RickKnight** » 30. Jul 2007, 05:28

Have you thought about imaging the partition to an inexpensive device like USB key or USB external drive, then removing and mount the space under the host OS, then build an image back to a gust image file?

That sounds reasonable. What tool do you use to make the image? wIs VMware's Image COnverter compatible?

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