This utility may be able to do it. I have never tried using it in this way. But you put something like \\.\PhysicalDrive0 in the source field. You will probably need to figure out which drive number windows gave the drive. You probably can noodle it out from diskpart (in windows 7) using the "list disk" command or the disk management snap in from the control panel.
You can also mount the physical drive in virtualbox. This is what I did a few years ago. Then used a copy of linux to use the dd command to copy the drive into a similar sized VDI file.
If you are looking for a backup solution. Acronis or the built in windows backup are both good choices. I am currently using the windows 7 backup solution. It creates VirtualPC VHD images and a set of differencing zip files. Windows 8 is similar. That is a good choice for a single computer.
Index 
Flat 
Re: so virtual box it is! another ?
Reply
