Th3 Core

I've only run it with Windows by running it as a VM (rather than dual boot). Is this much better? Because the VM route is dead easy and works fine on Win8.

From a friend w/ dual boot:

Since i mentioned that is was possible i decided to try it. The Dell laptop was getting wonky. I don't use any virus protection and I picked up some malware,  It was starting to slow down.

I never keep anything too important on the laptop but the downloads folder was filled with installers and videos and what not, plus a the most recent family pics.

Anyway, i launched linux, backed up the win user files to the linux side and reinstalled the OS "installation will erase everything on the disk, are you sure you want to do this?" -- YES.

Put on a clean win7, nice and zippy, no malware. and then rebooted to linux to move my files back.

worked great.

>but if the host is bricked

Yeah, over the past 20 years I've had plenty of Win systems go belly-up. All but once early-on, I was confident that I had everything backed up and that data losses were minimal, if any.  Even so, I *STILL* wanted to get in there and look around one last time. You know, like checking the hotel bathroom and under the bed before checkout.  So dual is good for that even if you didn't care for using linux for production.

What I wonder, though, is what keeps the  reloaded Win disk image from overwriting the linux install? Partitioning the disk?