Connect to WindowsXP physical from Ubuntu

[waldzinator]

I'm a newb, so bare with me. After some nasty viruses invaded my computer, I reinstalled WindowsXP as a physical partition from an image file provided on my Dell Laptop (courtesy of Norton Ghost). I've been linux-curious, so I then installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, also a physical partition. Well, I love Ubuntu and hate Windows, but my wife loves iTunes. Rather than constantly rebooting into different OSes, I was hoping I could set up a virtual connection to my XP partition. I've read through some of the how-to's for this, and they all look kinda messy.

I basically want the ability to let my wife access our XP physical drive, download her music, saving it wherever (as long as iTunes can find it). I found the following HOWTO: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=1966, which under "import native WinXP" seems to suggest using a raw host hard disk from guest http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk.

I guess I have a few questions. First, is this even necessary, or do I simply need to create a disk image file (I want to avoid sucking up additional HDD space)? If raw host HDD access is the solution, I haven't found a good description of how to set it up. Is there a good HOWTO?

I appreciate any help that can be provided.

[fixedwheel]

Is there a good HOWTO?

yes, it can be found in the Howtos&Tutorials section: HOWTO: Windows XP in both VM and native