Is it possible to use a Vista Boot Camp partition inside Virtual Box on Mac OS X

Question

I've got windows Vista installed inside Virtual Box on my Mac OS partition. I've also got it installed under boot camp and I occasionally boot to it when I want to run windows with better performance and I don't need to run any mac apps. Unfortunately, all the data and apps in the 2 windows vista's are completely different.

Is there a way to share the installation of vista between the 2 ways of running it?

Edit: I found a forum post about running XP, but it turned into a long list of "I tried this, and it didn't work" and ends inconclusively.

Answer 1

This is a feature supported by VMWare Fusion and Parallels, however VirtualBox does not support it at this point in time, most likely because they are using the same codebase cross platform.

I am not aware of future plans to include this. The only alternative is to create a Virtual Machine from the Bootcamp partition and then remove Bootcamp if you don't need it.

Answer 2

This works with both Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion.

You asked about Virtual Box but perhaps the other two are an option as well?

I have a MacBook set up to boot into either Snow Leopard or Vista and the installed Vista on the Boot Camp partition also runs within Parallels Desktop.