VM Guest from physical disk

[mdneilson]

Hi everyone,

In short, I am ordering a new laptop with all kinds of power and would like to be able to access either of my physical OS installs from within the opposing OS.

The computer will dual-boot Windows and an Ubuntu, installed on separate hard drives (Windows on a SSD and Linux on a HDD).
I would like the ability to VM into the physical install of Linux from windows, and vice-versa. (It is somewhat important to be able to fully boot into either as well)
I know that VMWare has the ability to boot from a physical install, but I haven't been able to tell if Virtualbox can.
I've heard great things about Virtualbox and would love to give it a try, if it can support my desires.

Also, I'm not really sure if this method is really 'safe', so please correct me if I am putting anything at risk by doing this.
If it is safer and possible, I can settle for just accessing the physical Linux install only.

Thanks for the help.

[mpack]

See the "Howto's and Tutorials" area. There tutorials there on getting the same Windows (XP or 7) install to run both natively and as a VM. Perhaps there is something similar for Linux, I've never needed to find out.

[mdneilson]

I found the Windows one. I don't know how I missed that :/ Thanks. I will have to search more for a Linux solution... or experiment.

[kossmoboleat]

I am in the same boat. I'd like to be able to boot into my Linux and Windows OS while being able to start both as virtual machines. Have you had any success running a virtual machine based on your installed Linux OS?

I guess you were referring to this tutorial for Windows? http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows.

[mpack]

No, I was not referring to that. Look at the list of forums on this site - the one on top of the list should be hard to miss.

[mdneilson]

I was able to get Ubuntu running from Windows using VMware (Unity didn't work). It was ok, but I haven't messed with it too much. I also installed VirtualBox and will be using that to compare soon. Take note that my Windows and Ubuntu installs are on different drives, so disk speeds are not impacted by running simultaneously.