[PLUG] Need Virtualization Advice

[Mark Phillips]

I have managed to fill up my laptop's dual boot (Win 7 and Debian testing)
320 GB drive, so I have a new shiny 750 GB drive to install. I have tried
to use Clonezilla, and it keeps failing because the old drive has 512 byte
sectors and the new drive has 4096 byte sectors. No problem; I will just
create a system image of the Windows partitions to move that to the new
drive, net install Debian testing, and copy over my user files.

However, I was thinking that I could get rid of the dual boot and just
virtualize the Windows partition. My questions -

1. Can I create a virtual version of my Windows 7 Home Premium using the
system recovery disk and the backup on my external usb drive? So far, it
installs to the new 750 GB drive with no issues. I don't have any original
media disks.

2. Vmware or Virtualbox? Do either one support usb so I can run iTunes on
my virtual Windows drive? A while ago I was able to get vmware to run off
of the Windows disk partition, but it seemed to break every time I ran an
upgrade on Debian, and it was a pain to get it to work each time. I don't
want to fiddle with this approach again, unless I have to.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Mark