Getting Fedora deployed on external HDD to run on Virtual Machine? [closed]

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Situation:

I have installed Fedora on an external HDD and done so in such a way that it is completely decoupled form my windows installation. i.e I DONT have a dualboot config.

How my setup works is -- I have set my BIOS boot order is to first consider USB HDD and then internal HDD. So when I want to boot fedora I plug external HDD into the USB3.0 slot. And it just boots into Fedora. As long as the HDD is plugged in there is no way to boot into Windows anymore.

I can safely say the I have a Fedora "image" (although I don't know if image is the right word) deployed on external HDD and the bootloader of Fedora and bootloader of windows are on seperate HDDs - One is on external and the other is on internal and each is completely independent of the other.

My external HDD filesystem is

• /boot - ext4 (has only fedora entry)
• / -- ext4 lvm
• /home - ext4 lvm
• swap - swap

Requirement

Now is good because of the independence. But every time I want to use Fedora I have to restart and boot. I am wondering if I can setup virtualization environment that I can use to boot my external HDD in a VM, while working in Windows.

i.e I am in windows. I want to boot fedora. So I just plug external HDD and start VMWare or VirtualBox and start a VM. And it detects my external HDD and boots into it.

and

When my PC is off and if I plug the external HDD and then turn it on, it should still be able to boot into fedora.

I tried using virtualbox. And I added my external HDD to USB list but when I start the VM it says it could not find any OS to boot into.

Is this because Windows cannot read my external HDD partitions ? I can see that Windows is detecting the drive and the windows disk management is showing the partitions but I can't make virtual box to make it boot off of it.

Is it because virtualbox needs a virtual disk file or and it cannot boot off of external HDD ?

Is there any tool that allows me to do what I want ? i.e while in windows, boot into fedora on my external HDD ?

Answer 1

Figured it out.

I had to create a VDMK file for my external HDD

source: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-a-usb-flash-drive-in-virtualbox/