It is e.x.a.c.t.l.y the same. Instead of selecting an image for the virtual dvd drive, you select an image for the hard drive, or an image for an usb drive. It is as fast and as simple either way with the advantage of not having to go through the install process if you just start fe the hard drive image. The downside possibly being download size compared to say, downloading a netboot iso that will install the latest packages from the very start.
Sounds to me like you're one who is doing the VM right, as effectively as anybody.
I wonder what people think about this,
When I was first doing VMs, I would have the image in a file and it had to be stored somewhere.
All I would have in the file, would be an OS and maybe a couple apps installed.
Really only takes up a few GB of drive space as long as I don't try to store any massive or valuable data within the image.
I wouldn't want that kind of data in my images anyway.
And I had plenty of drive space so I didn't need any compression or space-saving measures to be applied for storing images.
In this case the working image takes up the exact same space on some drive either way.
Might as well let the image stay installed on its own partition so I could boot to it the bare metal way when I wanted to, or alternatively use it as a VM when re-booted to a powerful enough host OS which has been previously installed to a different partition.
Now in the terabyte world I've got more spare drive space than ever, and with GPT drive layout I can have as many partitions as I want.
