Virtualize Partition

[SterlingButters]

So I really wanted to avoid this discussion alot of it because I wanted to figure it out on my own but I am left with no choice now...

Alot of background information is required for this post:

I have a triple boot setup which was pretty easy, where this is my disk layout:

/dev/disk0

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh               124.0 GB   disk0s2

   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BackTrack               35.0 GB    disk0s3

   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BootCamp               160.7 GB   disk0s4

Where I am using rEFInd as my boot manager and grub2 is installed to sda3 (BackTrack (partition only))... My goal in the triple boot was to be able to never even look at the grub menu and I achieved this goal by installing grub to the partition running backtrack and setting the timeout to zero so that the only time grub would have the opportunity to come up is when I boot linux.

But since this all went relatively smoothly I decided it would fun to accept a greater challenge: virtualize both non-OS X partitions. I had done so before with a different setup where grub was installed to the MBR and rEFInd over that where booting into Windows or Linux brought up the grub menu. Before installing the linux, though, I used VM Ware to virtualize the partition, then afterwards installed backtrack and the bootcamp virtual machine worked perfectly. I then used the raw disk creator to create rawdisk images of my backtrack partition and then miraculously through trial and error used the bootcamp vmx file to develop a working vmx file for backtrack. From here I received the "grub rescue>" and then realized that linux requires a bootloader so I changed the virtual machine startup disk to the Backtrack live cd and installed grub to the mbr through the VM. This worked temporarily and when I say worked I mean that I could boot into linux using rEFInd as well as through the VM. But its a really buggy setup, I always had things going wrong and eventually I couldn't access any information/partitions through rEFInd as the second installation of grub through the virtual machine seemed to make rEFInd think that the linux partition had been duplicated and the shift/change in the mbr elicited a black screen with a blinking white cursor whenever I tried to boot one of the options. As you may know uninstalling grub is not an easy thing to do and it is buggy as well.

     So anyway the new triple boot setup seems to make things alot smoother and less buggy because as I began trying to turn my BootCamp partition into a virtual machine I was expecting a good 30 minutes of figuring everything out but the BootCamp migration or whatever you wanna call it but it took over everything and it was a piece of cake (something that didn't happen with the previous setup). So if it was that easy for configuring BootCamp, I only had but one more step: virtualizing backtrack. I tried everything it seems like, I used saved vmx files from the previous setup, a good hour of trial and error with no avail, duplicating the BootCamp vmx file and changing the few, machine-specific configurations for use with BackTrack, changing and recreating the rawdisk a good 10 or 20 times, just about everything I could think of and everytime I receive the network boot deal in the attached image.

The only explanation I can come up with, is that no operating system is found because grub only exists on the partition and not the MBR where it could point to where the operating system exists. But the argument to that is that the raw disk creator "clones" the partition and if grub is on the partition then the VM should boot. So that you know all of that my question is vague: What am I doing wrong that the attached rawdisk does not make the OS visible to the VM? Is there anything I can do?

     I am not one to be picky for answers or criticism but before you ask me why I am even doing this, I am going to answer YOUR question here:

I am doing it for just the sake of doing it! for knowledge and satisfying what-if's with some purposes of course but mostly to just do it... And those of you who tell me it cant be done, I wont even bother reading your answers because there are so many times in forums that I have seen a post saying that it cant be done and then a comment or thought to myself saying "What are you talking about, I've done it!"... Also, I have found that anything is possible when it comes to computers so don't tell me something is not and those of you who have answers not like I mentioned, let them come, I need help, feel free to ask questions, and thank you!