Boot a native OS on a hard disk as a virtual machine - windows

Question

I'm searching for a solution to boot a native OS on a hard disk as a virtual machine.
It's like what VMware Fusion did on a Mac which boots Windows in Boot Camp as a virtual machine.
In detail, I have Windows installed on /dev/sda2 and Ubuntu 11.10 on /dev/sda5.
Is there anyway to use a virtual machine software to boot the Windows on /dev/sda2 as a virtual machine while I'm using Ubuntu?

Answer 1

Yes, I did this long ago following this guide:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-nm/2008-February/000521.html
of course, always backup and be careful!
Essentially:
Used a USB 3.5 HD enclosure and connect the XP drive to it.
If the drive was shutdown uncleanly you may need to manually
mount it with the following command.
sudo mount ntfs-3g /dev/whereyourdriveis /mount/somemountpoint -o
force
Once the drive is mounted under linux contiunue to step 2.
Launch VMWare.
Go to File -> New -> New Virtual Machine.
Select "Custom"
Select Next
Select your operating system (i.e. Win XP)
Select Next
Give it a name like "WindowsXP"
Select Next
Specify processor One or Two
Select Next
Choose public or private (on a single-user machine this doesn't
matter)
Select Next
Select the memory to devote to the virtual machine. 512 MB is a
pretty useful number.
Select your network connection
Select Next.
Leave SCSI set to BusLogic
Select Next
Select Use Physical Disk
Select Next
Select Use Entire Drive
Select Next
Specify the place to save the VM
At this point you're done Select Power On to boot the Physical drive
in VMWare!
More Info: I should add, I have successfully done this, but I also had success using this method years even years before. So there are at least two known and tested ways for accomplishing this that I can tell you.

Answer 2

You can do this via VirtualBox raw disk access.
(http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html)
It basically creates a "virtual" disk file that points to the actual partition and loads it as a disk drive in the VM. I've installed Linux guest in VB on Windows host in such a way, and the installation can boot from the VM or by itself.

Answer 3

As answered, this also can be done in VirtualBox, this is the way that works for me
Always, make sure that you are running as Administrator(Windows) or Sudo(Linux), any changes that you do will write to the REAL disk, so be carefull
In Windows
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "E:\virtualbox\linuxhd.vmdk" -rawdisk "\\.\PhysicalDrive1"
RAW host disk access VMDK file E:\virtualbox\linuxhd.vmdk created successfully.
In Linux
$ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "~/linuxhd.vmdk" -rawdisk "/dev/sda"
It will create a file with something around 1kb that is a link to the physical hard drive.
Then create a Virtual Machine as ever you do.
If you want to map only a partition
At Windows
\\.\Physicaldrive1 -partitions 1
(Disk start with 0, partitions
with 1)
At Linux (Much more intuitive)
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
etc.
Eventually you can get resolution issues
Eventually you can get resolution issues even after install vboxadditions, in my experience the problem is your /etc/X11/xorg.conf it is configured to your specific real hardware specs(I have a offboard GPU for example), least in my case I solve it simply removing this file (xorg auto configure at boot, only will not work if you set some specific setting), so run:
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.original && sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Reference
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=36694
https://romaimperator.com/?p=29