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How to use a real partition with Windows 7 installed, in a virtualbox vm?

rated 0 times [ 27] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 77063 / 3 Years ago, sat, october 16, 2021, 3:02:35

My Ubuntu 12.04 is installed on /dev/sda5 and Windows 7 on /dev/sda1. When I am running Ubuntu, I would like to use Virtualbox to run Windows 7 in a VM. The Windows 7 partition is 1 TB and is half full, i.e. large, so I don't want to copy it into a virtual hard disk.

I have read that it is possible to use a real hard disk for a Virtualbox VM, but the various instructions I have found differ from each other, and I can't seem to get it to work. Does anyone know a way to make it work in Ubuntu 12.04 and Virtualbox 2.1.12_Ubuntu r77245 (the latest Ubuntu installed the repos)?

Please post how it works for you as I want to retry any method that might work.

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ouschee

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4 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago bathtusain · Accepted Answer

The command you want is

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename Win7.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1

This will create a special VMDK virtual disk file (Win7.vmdk) which is actually a pointer to the host disk partition /dev/sda1.

In theory, you can then use this as the disk file for a VM to run directly from the actual disk partition, but...

(a) I've never tried this, so don't know how reliable it is

(b) you may get problems with Windows Activation depending on your license key and whether Windows decides that the detected 'hardware' has significantly changed