I current have a T60 laptop with a 64 bit Intel Core 2 Duo CPU with vT technology and 3 GB of RAM (can upgrade to 4GB). I have two Primary partitions one loading Ubuntu 9.04 and the other with Windows Vista. In the Windows environment I also run Windows 2003 server and Windows 98 through Virtual PC 2007, for development and/or using old software. I recently realized that some OS virtualizing softwares support booting directly off other disk partitions, but I am unable to figure this out myself.
I tried VirtualBox's VBoxManage and also KVM, but both have left me confused. I was able to install KVM and associated files through the documentation, but am unable to figure how to use an existing VHD file as the virtual disk. Later on I realized it doesn't support graphic OSes either?!!
Can some expert in this field, please help me identify a good virtualizing software, preferably freeware, that supports booting off other partitions, and walk me through the actual process of getting it working. I don't mind using either Windows or Linux as the Host, although I guess Linux would be better since the host itself requires relatively less memory, isn't it?!
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Hi ryder0707, thanks for commenting, but my NTFS partitions are already mounted in Linux and I could well have converted the .vhd files. My actual need is to have an OS Virtualizing software boot directly from a specified (entire) disk partition directly rather than a .vhd (or other formats) file. Not all virtualizing tools support this. VBox does, but it is unsupported. KVM supposedly does, but I am not sure if it is Graphical.
btw, while looking at my old docs i just realized, you could achieve what you plan to do with vmware server 1.0 not the latest 2.0
see below screenshot
rdm with vmware server 1.x
and this
rdm
Just register and download it from vmware, it is still available at http://www.vmware.com/down
There might be a different problem,
During instalation of the Windows on the physical disk specific drivers for various components get installed (video f.e.)
the question is does it recognize that it is running on a different system with different hardware?
Also Windows had the tendency to require recertification after a few configuration changes, in that case you might run into trouble after a few alternating boots.
No but the guest OS will have to adapt to the available network/video/disk etc. drivers being offered by hardware on one side and virtual manager on the other side. (even depending on the hadware involved...)
If your system has a Nvidia 8200 , i doubt it will be available to the guest as such... but you will have the Nvidia 8200 driver on the native capable windows partition.
When you create a VM, everything on the guest OS is basically virtual hardware, so it won't use the host hardware directly unless you install vmware workstation(WS) or fusion, you can actually get 3D acceleration from the host video card, you can even run HD video on VM using host video capability but the thing is, WS/fusion doesn't support RDM
as long as vmware tools is installed, the guest OS should know how to utilize host hardware, not directly but virtually
eeshahidt did not say that he want to use the host video/hardware capability directly, he just needs to write to the disk directly
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by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-09-04 at 22:08:47ID: 25265011
You are looking this at the wrong way, you should not be worried about what product to use
You just need to make sure the other OS partition available to the other OS
In this case, you need to boot into Ubuntu and mount NTFS partition(your vista installation)
Refer below, sorry i'm not really linux person, just helping you google for these
http://maketecheasier.com/
http://www.technixupdate.c
Once mounted, you need to convert the vhd(VPC virtual disk format) to format used by your virtualizing software
Check the product documentation on how to do this, once converted, load the converted virtual disk(vdi for virtual box & vmdk for vmware server) by creating new VMs(win2k3 & win98)
Cheers!