[Discuss] Using raw host hard disk in virtual client

[j.natowitz at rcn.com (Jerry Natowitz)]

I share a computer with my wife. She sticks to Windows 7, I generally 
use Linux.  There are a lot of partitions on the systems, NTFS, VFAT, 
and ext4.  I would like to have a virtual Linux client running on W7 
that I can either ssh to, or ftp mount partitions from a laptop.

I've used VirtualBox at work to run both Linux clients on Windows XP, or 
vice versa.  Windows client on Linux works well, but the Linux client on 
Windows is very slow.  Both use file based virtual disks.  I looked into 
native disk partition support, but got the impression that it is not 
stable enough to use in a production/home environment.

At best, one could copy a disk or partitions of a disk into a virtual 
disk to use on the guest.

I used VMware a long time ago, but never used Xen.  Any advise on how to 
proceed?
-- 
	Jerry Natowitz
===>    j.natowitz (at) gmail.com