Has anyone heard of a way to create a virtual filesystem in a regular file in NTFS and boot from it? Scenario: I want to try Windows 8 pre-release and really don't want to play the re-partitioning game, especially since I might just delete the thing after I'm done playing with it. Basically, I'd like to be able to mount <VirtualWinDOwS8filesystem.img> as Windows 8's drive C:, and (preferably) still be able to see the actual real partition as Windows 8's drive D: -- I want to create a boot menu entry either in GRUB or the Windows 7 boot loader menu to boot from the file. Then, when I'm done, I just remove the entry and delete the file. Painless. Is it possible? If so, has anyone created a free / and hopefully open-source way of doing this? I could just use a virtual box I know, however that isn't the same as running native. I want to see how things run (speed and driver-wise) as they actually would, not on generic virtual devices.
I think you might actually be better off with partitioning...which really isn't that big of a deal unless you try to do it with nothing but Disk Management...try EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition, it's great