I'm about to take the plunge and install Win7 RC1 on my desktop machine. However I want to preserve access to my old HDD with XP on it. I don't really want to use full dual-boot since that would leave my new Win7 install on the d:\ drive, which it wouldn't otherwise be.
Is it possible to use Virtualbox to boot from that old real drive instead of from an image?
If so, what are the implications for drivers, etc, since the "new" running OS will be using VirtualBox's virtual hardware and not the original hardware on which XP thinks it was installed.
Best Answer
Yes. VirtualBox has support for using a raw host hard disk from a guest since version 1.4. As of version 2.2.0, it is still listed as an experimental feature. It is described in section 9.10 of the user manual for VirtualBox 2.2.0.
There are some instructions for running a WindowsXP guest using a raw host hard disk on a linux host:
The second link above describes some steps to prepare your XP system prior to booting under VirtualBox.