Boot second OS drive as virtual pc

[Puzzled]

Hi

Not sure if what I want to do will work but is there a way to quickly snapshot an OS on a second drive and boot in a vitual pc so I can carry on with some work without having to reset?

I keep a secondary OS due to program compatibility (primary is Win 10) but it can sometimes be a pain to have to reboot and close what I was doing on my main OS.

Bit worried about corruption so would rather create a quick copy and boot that rather than using the physical disk.

I know when I used virtual pc's in the past the hardware would be completely diffeent so I'm assuming each time I'd need to reinstall a load of drivers, any improvements in that area?

Some of the programs I use are pretty heavy on the CPU so can't use a virtual setup all the time but it would reduce some downtime.

Thanks

 

[AHarvey]

you're only option would to create a virtual disk using something like http://www.vmware.com/ or virtualbox

Your PC specs will play a massive part in performance though.

I suppose you could link both of them to something like dropbox or onedrive for file storage for easy access.

 

[Puzzled]

you're only option would to create a virtual disk using something like http://www.vmware.com/ or virtualbox

Your PC specs will play a massive part in performance though.

I suppose you could link both of them to something like dropbox or onedrive for file storage for easy access.

Yeah I was thinking of using a networked HDD as shared storage with local copies.

I'll give it a go and see if its worth the hassle. I do have a spare PC I could use to completely separate the systems but just takes up space.

Was just wondering if virtual pc's had got any better at accessing hardware or at least mimicking the same specs to avoid driver issues.

 

[AHarvey]

I've not set any up but it's something I am looking at, I use them now and then and i've not really had any issues.

The spare PC could easily be setup and stored anywhere and just remote desktop in to it, that way it doesn't need it's own keyboard etc.

 

[Rroff]

Think I used Disk2vhd (said imdisk before but I think I got that wrong) to pack an old laptop HDD into a virtual HDD and then configured it in Virtual Box - generally works pretty well but then I have a 4820K for the extra extensions for virtualisation which boosts performance of some aspects a bit.

You don't want to run the image from a network location though as that will take forever to boot up, etc. and get a lot of pauses when doing stuff.

 

[KIA]

Think I used Disk2vhd (said imdisk before but I think I got that wrong) to pack an old laptop HDD into a virtual HDD and then configured it in Virtual Box - generally works pretty well but then I have a 4820K for the extra extensions for virtualisation which boosts performance of some aspects a bit.

You don't want to run the image from a network location though as that will take forever to boot up, etc. and get a lot of pauses when doing stuff.

What he said. Storing the VHD on a network location is possible, but it'll be slow.

 

[stopper]

Was just wondering if virtual pc's had got any better at accessing hardware or at least mimicking the same specs to avoid driver issues.

You can use PCI passthrough, where the guest OS takes full control of secondary hardware in your setup with native performance.
It's a right bugger to setup though.