Virtualbox
Raw access
First of all plug-in the device you want to access directly, e.g. a USB-Disk. Make sure, it is not mounted automatically.
On Windows, you also need the special device specification like “\\.\PhysicalDrive0” for the device. You can get it with the following command
wmic diskdrive list brief
The result could look like
>wmic diskdrive list brief Caption DeviceID Model Partitions Size ST9320423AS \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 ST9320423AS 3 320070320640 TOSHIBA MK1059GSM USB Device \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 TOSHIBA MK1059GSM USB Device 1 1000202273280
In this example, I want to have raw access to \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
To enable RAW access to this device, you have to create a vmdk file with RAW access.
- Start VirtualBox as administrator
- Execute the following command as administrator!
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename d:\vms\raw.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
It should result in
> VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename d:\vms\raw.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 RAW host disk access VMDK file d:\vms\raw.vmdk created successfully.
You can read more about this procedure and alsow how to access single partitons in this document http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk
You can now create a virtual machine and add the created raw.vmdk to it as HDD (on Windows make sure VirtualBox runs as Administrator).
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