I am a somewhat experienced Ubuntu novice, and a little experienced novice with VirtualBox. I have successfully experienced running Windows XP as a Guest on Ubuntu-host. I have attempted to experiment with the RAW host feature with no luck at all. But, prior to digging in to find what I am doing wrong, I would like to ask the question:

Are there any significant advantages to using one of these methods over the other? The one item that I am concerned about is the backup of my system. I currently use Acronis True Image to create backup images from time to time of all partitions on my system. Would having the Guest storage as a separate RAW Partition make my life easier or harder?

My Goal is to have a Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx) 64-bit Host with VirtualBox having a Windows XP Guest. I want no native Windows OS'es on my hardware.