Is it possible to boot from a file?

[wilko49]

I have a system image in a file on an external hard drive. Is it possible to boot from that image? If so, how would I go about doing this...

 

[wilko49]

It's an image of the first partition of my hard drive with a windows installation. Copied over with dd from a linux live cd.

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/media/BKP_HDD/C.iso bs=4096 conv=notrunc
(if that helps at all)

I was actually just curious as to whether it could be done, if the answer is 'no', that is fine too.

 

[wilko49]

You are right, mounting in linux is trivial, although it doesn't work with loop.... am I right in thinking that this means the fs is corrupted?