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I have two flash drive, one with Slax installed and another for Android x86 Live installed, but they do not boot in my laptop (in my work they boot perfectly).

I can boot from some live CDs/DVDs or its ISO files using VirtualBox, but I cannot do it for live flash drives - I put the flash drives and start a VirtualBox without any virtual HD, but VirtualBox does not recognize them as boot options, as it does for CDs/DVDs.

Any ideas? Any alternatives if VirtualBox does not support it?

Edit1: I'm using Windows (Windows 7) but I would like to know how to do it in Linux (Ubuntu, for example) too.

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USB boot isn't supported in VirtualBox. – Joe Internet Aug 2 '11 at 20:59
any alternative? – kokbira Aug 3 '11 at 2:00
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You can try this boot manager... plop.at/en/bootmanager.html. If you extract the file archive, you'll find a plpbt.iso file that you can set as your boot medium. This will give a bootloader with the usb option. If your vm is correctly configured for usb (you may need to disable 2.0 support), and your usb stick is already correctly configured (ie, it has a bootable os installed, and you know that it works), then it should boot in the vm. – Joe Internet Aug 3 '11 at 4:36
@Joe Internet, I did not test it but it can be a solution for other VM managers. For VirtualBox I do prefer harrymc solution. – kokbira Apr 12 at 1:32
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3 Answers

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See this article : Boot your USB Drive in VirtualBox.

The approach it discusses is to attach a physical drive to a virtual machine using the VBoxManage command-line tool that comes bundled with VirtualBox. You can then boot your virtual machine from the attached Physical drive. This is for Windows, but read on for Linux.

The same approach, but for Linux, is described in How to boot from USB in virtualbox on Ubuntu.

Alternatively, and again for Windows, Linux Live USB Creator (formerly uSbuntu) is a free software for Windows that allows you to create a bootable Live USB key with a Linux on it. It offers the option of automatic virtualization using portable VirtualBox to directly run Linux in Windows without any configuration nor installation.

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You are really a superuser!!!! Thanks :) Details: in Windows 7, you have to run cmd commands and VirtualBox as administrator! – kokbira Aug 12 '11 at 16:55
I'm dreaming With a Slax bootable flashdrive +some windows portable apps +Wine. With that trick on VirtualBox I can use it without the need of rebooting computer! Thanks again! – kokbira Apr 12 at 1:28
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up vote 1 down vote

I'm sorry to break it to you, but VirtualBox does not support booting from USB.

The only thing that I can think of is creating an image of the contents of the USB drive, mounting this as a CD-Rom in VirtualBox and booting from there.

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I thought it in the past but @harrymc show me how to do it. – kokbira Apr 12 at 1:29
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up vote 1 down vote

Not sure if people have found the solution, but I found this while trying to find the answer so thought id share.

In Windows 7, open a cmd prompt with admin privileges. cd to Programs, Oracle, VirtualBox.

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename C:\usb.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive#

Replace the # with the disk number from disk management in computer management. Then open the vmdk within VirtualBox as an existing hard drive image.

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same solution described by @harrymc – kokbira Apr 12 at 1:30
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