Using Virtualbox to read / boot old hard disks directly
Assuming you fit your old HD into an USB reader, e.g. it's on /dev/hdd now:
- Create a virtualbox computer without a virtual disk attached. And:
- VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /root/discodos.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sdd
- VBoxManage storageattach adoscomputer --storagectl "IDE" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium ./discodos.vmdk
After that, start your virtualbox and it MUST boot from that hard disk. 