Can virtual box run windows xp off a hard drive, no reboot?

[Actowolfy]

I have a hard drive that I took out of my old desktop and placed it into my newer one since the processor died. I was wondering if I can get VirtualBox to run the Windows XP OS on the hard drive so I don't have to restart the computer and change the boot order so I can use the it. I think it is just a hassle to have to click the little start button on windows 7 and reboot it and press f12 to start the other hard drive first in order to use it. If you could help me out, I would be very grateful

[Perryg]

Read about RAW access here http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idp13436352 and all the warnings.

[Actowolfy]

Ah thank you, I have read some of it and it sounds like the inconvience of rebooting is a better way to go than setting this up and screwing something up in the process and corrupting data, so for now I will stick to rebooting.

[BillG]

A wise decision.

The only other alternative wold be to use p2v software (such a disk2vhd) to convert your physical drive to a virtual disk, then create a vm using that as its disk drive. If that worked, you could transfer from host to guest without a reboot. Much safer than raw access.