A SATA drive will only let you have a maximum of four partitions for example, and you will also need to create a small swap partition. When you come to install a Linux distro, make sure you select ...

One of the most confusing and intimidating parts of installing Linux for dual-booting with Windows is the disk partitioning required.

This will create a backup of your VM in case something goes wrong. After all, editing drive partitions can be very dangerous if something goes wrong.

Before you can partition your disk you'll need to squeeze your Windows partition to free up some disk space for the new partition. Head to the Disk Management tool, and right-click your main partition ...

I could use diskutil to shrink the partition and then create a new partition, and copy the iso image (via dd) into that partition, and then boot Linux from the internal HD and do the upgrade.

When you create "Logical Partitions" within the "Extended Partition", Linux (and GRUB) start naming them after the four reserved names.

Jack Wallen walks you through the steps of encrypting a single partition on a Linux machine.