This might sound daft, but something similar used to work with live discs.
I’ve got Windows 10 and Mint 21.1 dual booting on my computer at the moment. Every so often I’ll realise that I’ve missed something from my Windows installation. If it’s important, I then have to boot to Windows to get the information, or the settings etc.
Is there a way to virtualise my Mint installation so that I can run both the OSs at once to make sure that I’ve got everything?
VirtualBox had a tool to do this with a live USB, but that was back in the MBR days, so it probably won’t work with modern hardware.
EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify, Mint and Windows are on the same physical disk, and the plan is to remove Windows once I’m done.
Update: I’m giving up. It looks like it is possible if you have separate disks with separate boot partitions, but getting it to work with a shared boot partition is harder work than I’m willing to do right now.
VMware Player can use a partition or disk, but might be in read only mode, I couldn’t get far enough to check.
Thanks for all the replies :)
Yup. Sure can. It’ll run as good as the system Resources’s you allocate during the install. I run them quite often with virtualbox
That’s good to know :)
Is there anything special that I need to do, or do I just boot from the Mint boot drive?
Yes, you can run Linux in a VM.
But also: you should be able to access your Windows partition from Linux, as it supports NTFS and FAT filesystems, and view the files there.
What I do is I have one partition with Windows, one with Linux, and a third one (with an NTFS file system) for the files I need to access from both.
Sorry, I should have clarified, I’ve got a data disc, but I’m forgetting about things that need to be migrated, like Thunderbird profiles and Syncthing. As far as I can tell, I need to export them first, and then import them in Mint. If I set Mint as a VM, I should be able to do it all in one go and hopefully not forget anything else :)
I think all the existing answers are on the basis of creating a new Linux VM.
And if I understand you correctly, you already have a bare metal Linux install that you want to run whilst Linux is up.
This is the best search result I could find: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=93437
It sounds like Virtualbox will indeed create a pseudo vhdx that points to a real partition, but windows is going to give you permissions drama.
The above link is out of date though, so its best viewed as info rather than guide.
Good luck.
Thanks for the link :)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they got it working from a partition, but I’ve found this link for VMWare that might work:
If you’re using the ‘Pro’ or ‘Education’ license for Windows 10, you can look into Hyper-V, which should allow you to boot a VM from a physical disk.
Hyper-V is built-in to Windows; & you just need to enable it in system settings.
Not sure if it works with partitions, if you’re dual booting the OSs from separate partitions on the same disk – it probably doesn’t; in which case you might need to migrate Mint to its dedicated disk first.
Yeah, it’s partitions that I’m dealing with. My goal is to transfer everything over, give it a few weeks to make sure that I haven’t missed anything, then wipe Windows from the partition so that Mint has the full disc.
Hyper-V will work with physical disk, but be warned - the wizard you run through when making a VM will make it look like you give the VM a VHD file for storage or nothing. Just attach no storage to the VM initially, then go into the VM settings after the wizard is complete to attach something besides a VHD.
Can’t entirely remember if it handles partitions but I know it can boot particular disks and if the setting exists, that’s where it would be
This is what I’m trying at the moment. I found this question on Super User that suggests it can be done, but like you say, the wizard makes it look like you have to use a file first.
I know that you can use a Type-1 Hypervisor to run two OSes at once. That will generally need a higher spec system, because it basically runs two systems at once. Not a very practical option.
From what I can tell, they would both need their own boot partition, which is where I’m stuck. My Windows and Mint installations share a boot partition, and it causes problems for this.
I know that it’s not very practical, for most people, but imagine having to use Windows for work or a specific game, and still being able to access your distro as normal. It could be handy for a small niche, and felt like an interesting challenge :)
