Is it possible to just pass QEMU a single drive?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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1

I managed to get QEMU booting Windows from a raw image file. I believe using the actual disk might give faster disk writes and reads.

I tried this command:

sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 8G -cpu host,kvm=off -smp 12,sockets=1,cores=6,threads=2 -cdrom ~/Win10_1511_English_x64.iso -drive file=/dev/sdb,id=disk,format=raw,if=none -device ich9-ahci

But, Windows can't see the drive. I guess loading the driver should allow Windows to install to the drive? Since it's a 850 Pro, I just need to find the driver for the disk? I'm a bit hesitant to just try something out in case it could damage the disk. Is it fine if I change the group for the disk to qemu, so my regular user can run it without sudo?

I get that I could just assign an entire sata controller to machine, but would prefer to just give it just one disk for now. I could always use the ASMedia controller if needed.

2

agh, i usually use libvirt because the man page for qemu is so bare. its seems to be using the achi stuffs, so it should work just like that. the only time you would need drivers is if you were using virtio. but im not much of an expert on qemu