
We can identify the disk numbers like 0,1 and 2 from Disk management in Windows OS under Computer Management. \PhysicalDrive0 : is the physical drive of the host computer. After you add this file to Virtual Media Manager, you will get the total size of the physical disk. \PhysicalDrive0Ĭ: \Users \sunuser \.Virtualbox \VDI \mydrive.vmdk : Location and ‘ mydrive.vmdk’ is the configuration VMDK file of your entire physical drive 0.ĭo not think the new VMDK file will be as huge as your physical disk size. VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename c: \Users \sunuser \.Virtualbox \VDI \mydrive.vmdk -rawdisk \ \. How to Access Entire Physical Disk in VirtualBoxġ) Open the Command prompt on the host computer, then go to the installation folder of the VirtualBox program in most cases, it will be under this location. This may hamper your physical computer Operating System. Do not mount and boot the main host OS partition (mostly the C drive) by this method. Also, booting a virtual machine from a physical USB drive or live USB is possible by following this method. We can use this physical disk access method in VirtualBox to mount and boot the Operating System from any of the secondary hard disks on the host OS.

Then allocate the disk to any Virtual Machine in VirtualBox. We must create a configuration VMDK file for the host’s entire physical disk or partition, then add the VMDK in the virtual media manager. Read more about what is Raw Diskīefore starting the procedure, let me explain how it will work.Īs I said earlier, it’s not easy as giving access to a physical disk in a VMware workstation. Unfortunately, we can’t do it as quickly as in the VMware workstation.įew commands and hard drive mapping are involved in mounting and using the physical disk partition in VirtualBox. This step by steps method explains how to access the physical disk in VirtualBox.

But in some cases, if you want to access/mount a physical drive partition to a virtual machine’s settings, you need to follow the steps to accomplish it. Once the VirtualBox guest additions are correctly installed, this can be enabled easily by doing additional steps. VirtualBox has a shared folder feature that allows accessing the host computer’s physical hard drive partition and folders from the virtual machine.
