# Passthrough Mounting A Physical Disk Drive in VirtualBox

## Creating the Physical Disk VMDK

1. Connect the physical disk to the host
2. Log into the VirtualBox host
3. Launch PowerShell as administrator
4. Run the following commands
   # list physical disks
   Get-PhysicalDisk
5. Take note of the disk number for the target disk to mount in VirtualBox
6. Continue with the following commands
   # cd to the virtualbox installation directory
   cd "$ENV:ProgramFiles\Oracle\VirtualBox"
   # create a vmdk disk pointing to the target physical disk
   # usage
   # .\VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "<%fullpathto.vmdk%>" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive<%disknumber%>
   .\VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "D:\VMs\SSD.vmdk" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive2
   # launch virtualbox manager
   .\VirtualBox.exe

## Attaching the Physical Disk to a Virtual Machine

NOTE: If you don't run VirtualBox Manager as administrator you will get permissions errors trying to access the physical disk

1. Right click on the target VM > Settings
2. Select Storage from the left navigation menu
3. Click the Add Hard disk icon
4. Click Add > Browse to and select the .vmdk file created earlier
5. Scroll to the bottom of the listing and select the .vmdk > Click Choose
6. Click OK to confirm the VM settings
7. Right click on the target VM > Start

Documentation: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk