Virtual OS & appls vs. separate hard drives

[Mac29]

So I want to use various OS's and don't want to multi-boot. I use a hard drive tray and it's slick. I have some drives but would need another, and with the Thailand flood I can't justify getting a 1 TB right now.

I just heard of a free virtualization application Google offers but I wonder how I can use it without having to
reload various applications every time I want to run Linux, for instance. Can virtualization programs save all
the drivers, etc. that you load onto them?

Thanks,

Mac