virtualbox.org

I am running the latest version of Virtualbox on 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, and all of this is on a laptop with a large hard drive partitioned with a small Windows boot partition, a regular Windows OS partition, a primary Linux file system partition (non-booting) and an extended partition on which I now have one logical drive with a Linux file system (non-booting). I would like to be able to access the Linux file systems on the extended partition directly from a Linux guest. Will Virtualbox allow me to do so, i.e., access the Linux rawdisk as an attached vmdk from a guest running Linux? Thanks.

I do not see much discussion about this issue, and I am wondering whether a Windows host can use a rawdisk only if the filesystem is one that Windows recognizes, even though the guest may be a Linux. I tried following the instructons in the manual, but it failed to work properly in the end. Although it appeared to build the vmdk file successfully, it did not show up afterwards in the Virtualbox MediaManager. I could not attach it to the existing SATA controller, on which I have a vdi already attached, nor to the existing IDE controller, on which I have an ISO file attached at boot time. Here is the command I used successfully and the later error I saw when trying to attach it.:


c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:\Users\display\VirtualBox VMs\linux_partition_5.vmdk" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 -partitions 5
RAW host disk access VMDK file C:\Users\display\VirtualBox VMs\linux_partition_5.vmdk created successfully.


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Failed to open the disk image file C:\Users\display\VirtualBox VMs\linux_partition_5.vmdk.

Permission problem accessing the file for the medium 'C:\Users\display\VirtualBox VMs\linux_partition_5.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

Result Code: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda}
Callee: IVirtualBox {0169423f-46b4-cde9-91af-1e9d5b6cd945}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
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So, I am basically wondering whether Windows host needs windows file system. What am I missing? Thanks.