virtualbox.org

$fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0680067f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1913 9729 62790052+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1913 3824 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 3825 6633 22563261 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 6634 6757 995998+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris
/dev/sda8 6758 8216 11719386 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 8217 9729 12153141 83 Linux

Now i want to install XP(or cteate some virtual drive) in /dev/sda1 which is 14.6 GB with HPFS/NTFS....
can someone kindly provide some help to achieve that?

Since the /dev/sda1 has Boot Flag enabled i wanted to understand wat i am doing without spoiling my HD..
I have Gparted partition Editor with me...

hm, unfortunately you do not provide much info on your system / HDD setup.
In general it is not required to reformat a physical HDD to the Guest filesystem since VBox stores the virtual HDDs of any guest within a file. At least unless you use a physical partition or a iSCSI target esp. specified via console through VBoxManage.

So I do not fully understand your question in the first place

Run the VBox GUI, create a VM just for trial and you´ll see how things works. For Linux hosts VBox usually stores the virtual HDD images in a hidden directory within you homedirectory.

You do not have to touch your physical HDD by any means...

my / partition has only 7GB free space..i didnt specify any /home partition while installin my Ubuntu 8.10...
i guess VBox virtual harddisk needs min of 10GB to store the image..now i am in process of resizing my adjacent partitions and moving my /home partiton to 12 GB size...if u think i have misunderstood anything and going in the wrong way feel free to suggest me Thanks for clarifying the myth i had about Vbox..i hope to install XP soon:)

No you are not going the wrong way

In general I´m using 10 to 20 GB per WinXP / Win2k guest.
Having enough HDD space (e.g. 100 GB) will not hurt though.

HDDs are very cheap nowadays (e.g. 640 GB for 50€ here in Germany) and I would suggest you buy another spare HDD for VBox if you do further experiments.