Maybe you can use virtualpc/vmware to connect to real xbox hard dive. When you create new virtual machine, they have option to use your real hardrdive.
about premade hardrdive imgae, you can create one 8 gb image and then restore the image to real xbox harddrive using "dd" linux command or other disk imaging tool acornic disk image/ norton ghost. I havnt used this method but this work. Before there was xboxhdm, there was another distro called xlinux. xlinux was hard to use so people used ghost to clone harddrive in new harddrive.
best solution for pc with 1 ide controller is to create a usb version of xboxhdm. Any modern mobo should be able to boot from usb ( specially the ones that have 1 ide controller). Another advantage of usb distro is that you can easily change the files around. To use the same usb disk for multiple xbox, you can just change the kernel specific font/ eeprom.