Virtual Windows in Linux

At some moment in time I had 2 HDDs on same PC:

1. Linux
2. Windows

At boot time, when required I’d boot the right OS by hitting the boot menu key (in my case F12) and selecting the right HDD with the right OS; I know I could use a boot loader but just wanted to be able to remove without problems any of the HDDs in case that was required.

My main OS was Linux so when I needed to use Windows let’s say for ~30 mins I’d have to power Linux off and boot from Windows HDD.

As I had Oracle VirtualBox installed on Linux I decided to try to access the Windows from there. And these are the steps I made:

1. Make the HDD accessible from my Linux host OS by running sudo chmod o+rw /dev/nvme0n1
2. Create a raw disk access VirtualBox image by running VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename '/home/vitalie/VirtualBox_VMs/link_to_Windows_drive.vmdk' -rawdisk /dev/nvme0n1.
   After that I was able to add the image to Virtual Media Manager:

3. Now I added this image to a virtual pc:

4. At boot time I’d get an error so I had to boot from Windows installation CD and in command prompt run Bootrec /fixMbr
5. Next had another error and modified the settings of the virtual pc and Enable EFI in Settings > System > Motherboard

4. And voilà

Resources used:

• https://ahelpme.com/software/virtualbox/add-a-raw-disk-to-a-virtualbox-virtual-machine/
• https://webistore.ru/prikladnoe-po/oshibka-verr_pdm_device_not_found-i-versii-usb-v-virtualbox/
• https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=85017
• https://pureinfotech.com/repair-master-boot-record-mbr-windows-10/
• https://superuser.com/questions/493858/virtualbox-fatal-int18-boot-failure
• https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk

P.S. not I have a new problem – finding a way to work with nested virtualizations as Intel doesn’t allow for that but I want to use Android Studio AVDs on the Windows OS … currently getting this