Can a Virtualbox HD image be mounted as a mapped hard drive?

[tankman1989]

I'm interested in creating a virtual hard disk in Virtualbox and then being able to mount or map the image like an ISO image, only that it is R/W. The reason for this is because I want to run a virtual machine that has a hard drive which is shared with the host machine. So, if I create a 40GB virtual disk and mount it on the virtual machine, I want to also be able to mount/map the file/drive on the host OS so that it can be read from and written to as well.

OR would it be possible to have an entire physical hard drive mount within the virtual machine (I have not been able to do this, I could only add a hard drive which was a file).

 

[Frick]

I have never tried to mount a whole internal harddrive in virtual box, but I have mounted an external USB drive without issue using the USB menu.

 

[tankman1989]

I have never tried to mount a whole internal harddrive in virtual box, but I have mounted an external USB drive without issue using the USB menu.

I would have thought that it was possible to mount an entire mapped drive from the host machine to a VM, but I have not found a way to do this. I find it strange that any optical drive can be mounted and even ISO files!

 

[FoolishTech]

I would have thought that it was possible to mount an entire mapped drive from the host machine to a VM, but I have not found a way to do this. I find it strange that any optical drive can be mounted and even ISO files!

Why not auto-mount the root of your physical hard drive as a shared folder in VB? Am I missing something here or not understanding what you are asking? I have a physical drive, well the root partition on a RAID array to be exact, mounted as a drive in VB... On my host machine it has a drive letter, in my VB I mount it with the same drive letter to avoid confusion.

 

[hondablaster]

In Virtual Box set your virtual nic to bridged mode.

Then connect to the host or guess OS \\Machine_name_or_IP\C$ on both machines.

Map network drive using different credentials.

It would help if you make an admin account that is the same spelling and password on both machines.

 

[FoolishTech]

It's far easier than that.

With the virtual machine off, simply go to the properties of your virtual machine, click Shared Folders at the bottom, add a new one, select the drive you want to access inside the VM, click Auto-Mount, and you're done! No matching credentials or mapping drives needed.

Note this does require the VB Guest Additions to be installed on the guest OS.

 

[tankman1989]

Thanks a lot to the two above posters!

I had tried to map a drive but was unsuccessful because I hadn't selected a bridged network adapter.

Also, I had tried to add a hard drive through the "Settings->Storage-> SATA controller" and that is where I was finding that I couldnt selet a drive. I found this strange because this is where I would have thought I could add an entire hard drive, but this is more like the Windows Managemnt Console where you can select drive letter, partition, format, etc rather than My Computer.

 

[onetech4all]

Re:

OR would it be possible to have an entire physical hard drive mount within the virtual machine (I have not been able to do this, I could only add a hard drive which was a file).

I think, if I remember, that VMware Workstation lets you use a physical hard drive to install a virtual machine on it. Not sure about Virtual Box. I hope I read your description right.

 

[pc-quebec]

I think, if I remember, that VMware Workstation lets you use a physical hard drive to install a virtual machine on it

Yes Vmware WS allow you to use a physical drive, they call it Raw drive, you can use them to install a guest (VM) or you can use them as storage for a guest( VM) install on the host disk , You can use all the disk or only a partition of it. If you Install an Guess OS on the Raw drive, ir can't be use as a boot drive, it as to be open with in Vmware WS.