If you installed VirtualBox to a custom directory, you’ll need to replace the directory path in the command with the path to your own VirtualBox directory: This command will change to VirtualBox’s default installation directory. Type the following command into the Command Prompt window and press Enter.
#Virtualbox boot from usb windows 8#
On Windows 8 or 8.1,Īnd click Command Prompt (Administrator). On Windows 7, open the Start menu, search for Command Prompt, right-click the Command Prompt shortcut, and select Run as administrator. Next, open a Command Prompt as Administrator. For example, here the USB drive is Disk 1.įirst, close any open VirtualBox windows. Look for the USB drive in the Disk Management window and note its disk number. Press Windows Key + R, type diskmgmt.msc into the Run dialog, and press Enter to open Be sure you have VirtualBox installed on your system before beginning this process.įirst, connect the USB drive containing the operating system you want to boot to your computer. This feature isn’t exposed in VirtualBox’s interface, but is part of the VBoxManage command. If you need additional help you can refer to the official VirtualBox documentation on this topic.10 VirtualBox Tricks and Advanced Features You Should Know About You can now run the VM that will boot from the physical drive you defined when creating the VMDK file.
To do so, open the VirtualBox GUI, select the desired VM, click Settings, click Storage, click Add Hard Disk button, select Choose existing drive, and then select the VMDK file you just created. This VMDK will be a very small file that simply points to your physical drive.
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ".vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk# VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ".vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/sda VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:UsersVirtualBox VMs.vmdk" -rawdisk. For each of the following examples ensure that you input the desired names between the arrows and replace the number or pound sign with your desired drive number. Now you can run the command to create the virtual hard drive file that points to your desired physical drive. If you’re using Windows as the host OS you will also need to go to the root directory of VirtualBox using the following command: cd C:Program FilesOracleVirtualBox Creating the VirtualBox Hard Drive Make note of the desired drive in the format of /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, etc. In Max OS X, use the following command: diskutil list. Make note of the desired drive in the format of dev/sda0, dev/sda1, etc. In Linux, run the following command: sudo fdisk -l. You’ll see the associated drive numbers on the left and will identify them later as PhysicalDrive0, PhysicalDrive1, etc. Next, you’ll need to find the path and drive number of the physical drive you’d like to mount: Choose all options like normal, but when asked about the virtual hard drive, select Do not add a virtual hard drive. You’ll first want to create a virtual machine within the VirtualBox GUI. And no matter which drive or partition you want to mount, it’s always a good idea to back up any existing data on it before continuing. Warning: Do not attempt to mount or boot the partition that runs the host OS with a VM, as that can lead to severe data corruption.
#Virtualbox boot from usb how to#
We’ll show how to do this when running VirtualBox on a Windows, Linux or Mac OS X host machine. This method is called VirtualBox “ raw hard disk access.” This allows you to mount or boot a secondary hard drive or external USB, for example. In today’s tutorial, we will only discuss mounting entire VirtualBox physical hard disks. VirtualBox can mount entire physical hard disks as well as only selected partitions of a drive. Though it’s possible to create a virtual hard disk image from the existing contents of a physical drive, you might find it useful to directly mount or boot a physical drive on a virtual machine (VM).Īnd while this is fairly easy to do with the GUI of VMware and Hyper-V when configuring a VM, that isn’t the case with creating a VirtualBox physical disk, or a VirtualBox raw disk, in VirtualBox, as the process requires some CLI usage.
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