Running OS from Linux from hard disk

[nikola_tesla]

I am dual booting Ubuntu and Windows XP, I'm wondering if the following is possible in some capacity:

Running Virtualbox from Ubuntu, can Virtualbox load the Windows XP OS into the VM to run as a Guest OS? I want to be running Linux as my primary operating system, but I do website development and frequently need to debug issues in IE6/7/8 (those specific browser versions, their specific JScript engines, their rendering quirks, et cetera) as well as run Photoshop and a few other Windows-centric applications I cannot get away from (GIMP sucks).

Or alternatively, is there a way I can convert my hard disk into something consumable by Virtualbox? I read the "Migrate Windows" documentation but this portion is very confusing to me: "Either pull the drive from the windows machine or copy the data with a low level image tool (like dd) to a USB drive or other removable media. If making an image, DO NOT image just the partition, this will not work! "

Assuming I can boot into Ubuntu and can run dd, how would this operation work?

[vbox4me2]

Just clone the entire dual booting drive with clonezilla, restore into a VM and remove the dual boot/ubuntu from the VM. Or run XP, use ntbackup to dump the XP part and restore it inside a VM with bartPE(xp).