installing from vmware

My boot drive is different from all the drives/partitions that OS's are stored on...

I'm just wondering, can you install an OS onto a drive from VMware so that it boots up like normal outside of VMware? Cos that would allow me to do stuff while vista reinstalls onto a new harddisk.

You can write directly to harddrive, so I don't see why you couldn't... but I don't wanna go through it all only to find it doesn't work.

There is a tool to convert a "normal" OS install into a VMWare image. Perhaps there is a tool that goes the other way? I wouldn't count on it though. I imagine it would be awkward with hardware drivers etc.

I gave up on it, almost done reinstalling everything. I had an image backed up but something went funny.

You can go from vm - physical using a normal backup/restore... though i dont think thats what youre after?

The short answer is no you cant.

Ghost?

Even shorter and simpler answer is no, you can't boot a VM on bare metal.

I should note that while you can dedicate a physical hardrive to one VM, it's generally a really really shitty idea.