Boot your USB Drive in VirtualBox

The GUI of VirtualBox does not have an option to boot a USB drive (Physical Drive) in a virtual machine.

However you can attach a physical drive to a virtual machine using a command line tool that is bundled with Virtual Box.You can then boot your virtual machine from the attached Physical drive.

This is the continuation of my previous article.You can read more about bootable usb drives in my previous article.

In this article I will show you how you can boot a bootable usb drive in Virtual Machine created by VirtualBox.You can easily test bootable USB drives within Windows and without restarting using this method.

Warning:Do not Attach your Primary hard disk to your Virtual Machine and Boot it in the Virtual machine

Download and install Virtual Box from here http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Attaching a Physical Disk to a Virtual Machine

Section 9.10 in the VirtualBox manual contains all the details required to attach a physical disk to a virtual machine.Using the vboxmanage.exe tool you can create a tiny vmdk file which points to your real USB drive (Physical Drive/Disk).You can attach this tiny vmdk to your virtual machine.A vmdk file is a virtual hard disk file which can be used with VirtualBox and VMWare.

The vboxmanage.exe tool is bundled with VirtualBox.You don’t have to download it separately

Open Command Prompt

Navigate to your Virtual Box installation Directory.

cd c:\”Program Files”\Sun\”xVM VirtualBox”

Type the following command and press enter
Syntax of the command
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename path\to\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -register
Example
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename c:\Users\Agni\.VirtualBox\VDI\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -register

You have to replace path\to\usb.vmdk with the path to your VDI folder(Where all your virtual hard disks are stored).If you want to save your usb.vmdk in different location,then you will have to add the usb.vmdk file manually in the GUI.This is because the register switch only registers the virtual hard disks stored in the User ’s VDI folder .

In windows your 1st Hard Disk will be \\.\PhysicalDrive0.Your 2nd Hard disk will be \\.\PhysicalDrive1.

To find the correct number for your USB Drive

Right Click on My Computer-Manage-Disk Management

Here you can find the correct disk number of your USB Drive

Drive Number of the Physical Drive

You will have to replace \\.\PhysicalDrive1 with the correct drive number.

In this case there was only 1 hard disk and 1 USB disk.So the USB drive is referred by \\.\PhysicalDrive1

In linux you have to replace \\.\PhysicalDrive1 with the correct /dev/sda reference.

Now you should have a tiny vmdk file.You can start your Virtual Machine with this tiny vmdk and boot from it.

1. Start VirtualBox.
2. Create a new Machine or Select an Existing Machine.
3. Settings-Hard Disk-Add-Select usb.vmdk
4. Make sure that usb.vmdk is your Primary Master.
   
   
   
5. System-Boot Order.Set your Hard Disk as the first boot device.
   

   Boot Order

6. Now start your Virtual Machine.

Your virtual machine will boot from your bootable physical hard disk.

In this screenshot I have used a bootable Ubuntu USB drive created using Unetbootin.

Read more: http://agnipulse.com/2009/07/boot-your-usb-drive-in-virtualbox/#ixzz0SHfDD0LD