To begin with, you're going to get an error in any event, either being Administrator or a SimpleUser. It's the error that differs:
Admin>VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0
VBoxManage.exe: error: Cannot open the raw disk: VERR_SHARING_VIOLATION
SimpleUser>VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0
VBoxManage.exe: error: Cannot open the raw disk: VERR_ACCESS_DENIED
The
VERR_SHARING_VIOLATION comes up because a running process in the host is using the hard disk. You'll need to "release" it. Use the "
Process Explorer" from SysInternals to see who's responsible for that. You could actually download the whole
SysInternals Suite, invaluable set of tools.
In my case, I enabled the Admin mode (menu "File" » "Show Details for All Processes") and I used the menu "Find" » "Find Handle or DLL..." » "HardDisk0", and out comes
OpenHardwareMonitor (to monitor the HDs temperatures, cool little tool but interfering at the moment). Exit OpenHardwareMonitor, and:
Admin>VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0
Number Type StartCHS EndCHS Size (MiB) Start (Sect)
1 0x07 0 /1 /1 1023/254/63 238475 63
Now, you could create your VMDK...
PS. No, it's not a typo, my PhysicalDrive0 is
not my boot disk, PhysicalDrive1 is.