id summary reporter owner description type status component version resolution keywords cc guest host 2778 Regression: raw disks/partitions on SATA no longer recognized -> fixed in SVN Holger Hoffstätte "I was very happy that vBox 2.0.x managed to boot a Linux guest (on a Windows XP host) off of a raw partition mapped to a .vmdk attached to a native Windows SATA controller (I run my SATA drive in native mode with the Intel drivers, not IDE emulation). I mapped the entire disk of my dual-boot laptop (as described in the ""advanced"" section of the docs), registered the disk image and could boot into grub and subsequently Linux - no problems. This does not work in vBox 2.1 any longer; the guest VM dies even before the ""BIOS"" screen is shown. It does not crash when SATA is enabled but no disks are attached, probably because the controller is simply not used. Switching the attached disk to use an IDE adapter lets 2.1 boot into grub & the guest kernel (so things basically work!), but mounting / subsequently fails because fstab wants to access /dev/sdX. I also tried to recreate the virtual raw disk with 2.1 (hoping it was just a format incompatibility), but the same symptom occurs. " defect closed other VirtualBox 2.1.0 fixed Linux Windows