Virtual environments on a Mac are often used for running alternative operating systems like Windows or Linux. Most often this is to run software that simply won’t work under the Mac operating system no matter how hard you try to persuade it.

Sometimes, however, it’s desirable to run a Mac inside a Mac, which is where the free Paragon Virtualization Manager for Mac OS X comes in. This may be handy for testing new software in an isolated environment to avoid damaging your Mac or you might want to clone your system to a removable disk for backup purposes.

If your Mac gets damaged or stolen, you could also quickly boot up its clone in a virtual environment like VMware, Parallels or VirtualBox. The only limitation is that the virtual Mac needs to be run on a Mac host. You can’t copy your machine and then run it inside Windows.

Taking a copy of your system is pretty easy. Just download and install Paragon Virtualization Manager for Mac OS X and then set it going. Select the hard drive volume that contains your Mac OS X installation and then choose the virtual environment you want to run it in. You can also opt to break your image into 2GB chunks.

Select the drive you want to create the image on and click Continue. Without needing to reboot, the program takes an exact copy of your disk and converts it into the relevant virtual disk image. You can now move it to a different machine and create a virtual computer using VMware, Parallels or VirtualBox, depending on the type of image you created.

There’s no limit to the number of images you can take, so you could use this as a form of back up, effectively creating a full copy of your Mac each time it’s run. Paragon Virtualization Manager for Mac OS X is a freeware download for Macs running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later.