[Solved] Error - trying to use virtual box - booting from an existing partition.

[Socratea]

OK this gave me a slight pause for thought, but I suggest

Download the latest Parted Magic live CD

as you don't currently have a burner boot the disk image using Virtual Box and then create a bootable usb of Parted Magic using UNetbootin

Shut everything down and reboot your machine with the live USB

use Ghost 4 Linux or Clonezilla to backup your system and write the files to an external USB device.

Regards
Andy

Oke I'm all backed-up and running.

One thing though for some reason nothing worked (I got grub error 17) until I removed the "- partitions 1,8" and changed it to say only "dev/sda".

Thanks again Andy. For the rest your guide was highly educational and worked like a charm. 

[7272andy]

I was assuming your boot partition was sda1, and your installation was at sda8, grub 17 is saying it cant find a valid partition (or even grub). using /dev/sda means you have raw access to the entire disk as opposed to the listed partitions.

Either way I'm glad you have it working to your needs

Regards
Andy

[Socratea]

I was assuming your boot partition was sda1, and your installation was at sda8, grub 17 is saying it cant find a valid partition (or even grub). using /dev/sda means you have raw access to the entire disk as opposed to the listed partitions.

I suspected something like that! Thanks for the confirmation. Its a great to know I'm finally starting to understand things... though I'm not there yet!  Anyway, I find it very useful when people explain the why in addition to the how (as you often do). It accelerates the learning process.

Your help is, as always, much appreciated.

[7272andy]

  Glad I was able to help

Regards