up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

Is there an application that allows you to add a virtualized version of your operating system into the mbr? By virtualized, I mean that if you boot this one, any changes made in it will not be committed to the disk. Just like how deepfreeze, returnil, and shadow user works. Is it possible to do that? Because the applications mentioned above requires you to reboot if you want that changes will not be retained.

link|improve this question
68% accept rate
so when you say "into the mbr" are you trying to native boot a vm. – user33788 Jun 18 '10 at 14:40
nope, not really a vm. The physical os itself. But in a sandboxed state wherein any changes made disappears after reboot – soul Jun 19 '10 at 0:15
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote

Do you mean something like VirtualBox or something that you can choose from at boot through a boot loader like GRUB?

If you are wanting the latter, than you could install your OS on a USB stick and then boot from that, then the changes will only exist on the USB stick.

Hope this helps!

link|improve this answer
would it be slower if I try to boot from usb stick – soul Jun 19 '10 at 0:08
It may be faster (as in data read/write) seeing as how it would be solid state. – Wuffers Jun 19 '10 at 0:17
And also, all writes would be contained on the USB stick but you can also access the main Hard Drive from the USB stick's OS to transfer documents and such. – Wuffers Jun 19 '10 at 0:31
Did this work?. – Wuffers Jun 22 '10 at 15:01
USB flash drives are much slower than hard drives. Though "solid state", they write very slowly and data has to be processed to prevent writing to the same spot in memory since writes can only be done several hundred times before the medium fails. – Abraxas Jul 31 '11 at 22:03
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.