virtualbox.org

I have a Windows 7 BootCamp partition on my MacBook. With VirtualBox, I set up "raw hard disk access" to be able to use Windows 7 without having to reboot each time and to be able to share files between Windows and MacOS. I boot on the Windows partition when I need more performance. This set up was not easy, but now it works pretty well.

Many BootCamp users know that there is an application called Winclone which can be used to backup a Windows partition image and save it on the MacOS partition. Then, if I take a backup image of the MacOS partition using Time Machine, I have a Winclone image backup at the same time. If I restore my MacOS partition, I just have to use the Winclone image, in a second step, to restore my Windows 7 partition.

My question is :

Is it possible to use a VBox virtual machine OR a VM snapshot as a Windows 7 backup image that I can restore if needed ? What would be the procedures to restore the Windows partition ? What about partition size ? Remember that if I have to restore MacOS, the bootcamp partition has to be rebuild in some way in order that the virtual machine could be used to restore a running Windows 7 partition.

I am not a computer geek. If it is too risky or complicated, I will keep using Winclone.

Thanks.