Booting into a Virtual Machine from a physical installation
Solution 1:
I know that VMWare Server can do this when you create the virtual machine.
I'd guess that Workstation is similar. If you create a new VM, when creating the virtual disk, choose instead to use a physical disk. Note: You have to run this process as an administrator, so launch VMWare with sudo or gksudo.
If Workstation doesn't help you, then VMWare server will do this, and it's free.
Caveats:
- VMWare server, I THINK, doesn't support USB 2.0.
- Now, you should also note that when you start the system as a VM, it's going to start looking all over the place for drivers, and every time you switch it back between guest OS and native OS, you'll confuse it. MIGHT even cause some "Activation" issues.
Solution 2:
See Configuring a Dual-Boot Computer for Use with a Virtual Machine:
Many users install VMware Workstation on a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer so they can run one or more of the existing operating systems in a virtual machine. If you are doing this, you may want to use the existing installation of an operating system rather than reinstall it in a virtual machine.
To support such installations, VMware Workstation makes it possible for you to use a physical IDE disk or partition, also known as a physical disk, inside a virtual machine.
Solution 3:
On Windows 8, I was able to to it quite easily. Instead of using VMWare or Virtual box, I used the default Hyper-V program to do it.
Go to Disk Management, and make the second HDD as offline(Right-Click on the HDD and from the context menu, select "Offline".
Install Hyper-V manager, if you don't already have that. You can probably Run "Programs and Features" to install this.
Once you do this, fire up Hyper-V manager, create a new virtual machine, and choose the disk as the second HDD on your system which you had just made offline.
That should initiate the boot from the second HDD.
When an HDD is offline, you cannot access it from Windows partition. So, after you are done working with the VM, and shutdown, go to Disk Management, and make the HDD online again, and then you can access it from your Windows partition.
Here's a link to help you with installing Hyper-V manager on Windows 7.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/schadinio/archive/2010/07/09/installing-hyper-v-manager-on-windows-7.aspx