Installing Win7 guest in Virtualbox from a USB stick image

1. Use dd to make an image file of the entire stick - e.g. dd if=/dev/sdg of=usb_stick.img
2. Copy to target machine.
3. Convert to .vmdk file using: "VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename output_usb.vmdk -rawdisk usb_stick.img (thanks to: http://www.dallagnese.fr/en/computers-it/boot-on-your-usb-drive-in-virtualbox-4/ ).
4. Add the image file to the SATA controller as a hard drive. Make sure it has lowest SATA port number.

SSH via intermediate host

In terminal on local machine:

$ ssh -f -N -L6969:localhost:6969 intermeduser@intermedhost
$ ssh intermeduser@intermed
intermedhost$  ssh -f -N -L6969:localhost:22 destuser@desthost

Then, in other local terminals:

$ ssh -p 6969 destuser@localhost

Updating Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive firmware on a Dell Optiplex 960

This was a real head-scratcher, because Seagate's ISO image would NOT boot on this machine, whether burnt to a CD or written to a flash drive with unetbootin.

I eventually succeeded by extracting the El Torito floppy image from the ISO using http://freecode.com/projects/geteltorito and then putting the files on a FreeDOS bootable flash drive using unetbootin.

I also found that unetbootin/FreeDOS requires a FAT16 formatted primary partition on the flash drive to work properly.