virtualbox.org

I'm new to VirtualBox, but had had a really fun time playing with it over the past few days. I'm curious. Is it possible to use an actual (empty) drive as the target for the virtual system rather than having the program create a virtual image?

In other words the VM would use the empty drive as the image and would use the VM to determine hardware and such.

You can use a physical disk instead of a virtual one, but the end result will be the same: an OS running in a virtual environment on virtual hardware. To get what you need, read the Manual where it's described in. Advanced topics - RAW Disk Access, chapter 12 IIRC. It's near the end, if you check the index, you will see it soon enough.

RAW access. THAT'S the term I was looking for. Thanks! I'll check it out!