So, I had a Dell laptop die on me in the middle of a prolonged business trip to Fiji. Dell apparently supply 24hr collect and return guarantee on these laptops but Dell was quite useless and unable to provide me with a number I could call from Fiji. Fast forward four weeks later and I'm home. I'm due to drop the Dell off to our IT dept in the morning and will hopefully get it back in the new year.

Now, the reason for the preamble above: Assuming I can get the hard disk out of the Dell and into USB enclosure for SATA hard disks...... Can I use the information on that hard disk to create a VM to run on my MacBook (i.e. using Parallels or VMWare)? Or do I actually need a Dell laptop that actually works before I can do this? Also, as I rather foolishly bought a MacBook with the smaller (150GB) hard disk, would such a VM happily run off a small USB or Firewire portable disk?

My thinking is, I have to go back to Fiji on the week beginning Jauary 5th and, if my Dell isn't back by then, I could at least take the MacBook + Dell VM out with me....