Another similar feature, snapshots, is useful for undoing changes quickly. These let you save the state of a machine and restore it later if something goes wrong.
They also let you pause your work exactly as it was and resume later. If you plan to use two different operating systems and need to pass files between them, or access the same files on both OSes, a virtual machine is usually better for this.
Most virtualization software allows you to copy and paste between the host and virtual OS, as well as easily setting up shared folders that both can access. This is tougher when dual-booting—especially if you're using two different OSes, since each platform uses a different file system. You'll need to either set up software to browse folders from the other OS, or use another solution like cloud storage. Virtualization software, like VirtualBox, often offers an option called dynamically allocated storage for its virtual disks.
With this, you can set the maximum disk size, but only have it take up space as you add files to it. For example, say you want the VM to have no more than GB. You select GB as the max and choose dynamic storage.
If the OS installation and a few apps then only take up 20GB, the VM's disk will only take up 20GB of space on your actual storage drive until you save more to it. You don't have this luxury on a dual-boot system. When you set up partitions for dual-booting, the size you create for the secondary OS is set from the start. If you're low on space and want to try out another OS, perhaps growing in the future, virtualization gives you more flexibility. By now, you should have a clearer idea of whether you'd be better off with a dual boot setup or a virtual machine.
In a lot of cases, it comes down to whether you plan to work in the other OS for long periods of time or only need it occasionally. But only you can make the right choice for your needs. If you end up using a virtual machine, VirtualBox is a great option as it's free and easy to use. With VirtualBox you can easily install and test multiple operating systems.
We'll show you how to set up Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux as a virtual machine. He left his IT job to write full-time in and has never looked back. He's been covering tech tutorials, video game recommendations, and more as a professional writer for over seven years. Do You Have a Powerful Computer? Share Share Tweet Email. Ben Stegner Articles Published.
Subscribe to our newsletter Join our newsletter for tech tips, reviews, free ebooks, and exclusive deals! After that, use a bootable USB drive to install the new operating system. To boot into the other operating system, you need to restart the PC and select the required operating system from the OS menu.
Access to all of the PC resources is the biggest and probably the only advantage of dual booting over virtualization. Whichever operating system you boot into, it will have access to all of the active PC resources as no other OS would be running. This makes it a perfect choice for running resource extensive programs , such as games or a video editing software. Every time you need to switch between the OS, you will have to restart the PC.
May be not too difficult, but its process is a bit complex as compared to using a virtual machine. You need to create a partition and install the OS using a bootable drive. On top of that, an error or conflict could occur while installing the new OS.
Overall, dual booting has more steps involved and has a greater tendency to wrong. In a dual boot set up, OS can easily affect the whole system if something goes wrong. A virus could lead to damage all the data inside the PC, including the data of the other OS.
This may be a rare sight, but it can happen. A virtual machine creates a dedicated virtual environment inside an OS to run another OS. This allows you to simultaneously run two or more operating systems without any conflicts. To get started, you just need a good virtualization software such as VirtualBox or Parallels , and the ISO file of the operating system you want to install.
Every virtualization software has a step-by-step wizard to install the operating system and allocate the required resources. And all the data of the new operating system can be saved on the same partition in a separate file. As virtual machine is just another window opened in your default operating system, you can easily switch between operating systems. This makes it perfect for working in multiple OSes simultaneously. Best of all, you can create as many profiles as you like to install operating systems.
Whatever happens in the virtual machine, stays in the virtual machine. Your default operating system will not have any effect , even if the operating system inside the virtual machine gets corrupted or infected. Deleting the profile or reverting to a previous snapshot is all you need to do to start over when you mess up the system.
We also highly suggest you read the corresponding chapter in VirtualBox's manual before you continue. We're going to use Ubuntu for this tutorial, but you should be able to reproduce the steps with other Linux distributions.
Also, if you have proprietary graphics drivers, you may encounter problems—VirtualBox has trouble with 3D acceleration in this setup. For now, it's best to use the default open source graphic drivers. Check out the video below for an overview of the process, then read on for the individual steps.
Assuming you already have both partitions set up, boot into Windows and perform the following steps:. Now, boot into Linux. We're going to use Ubuntu for this example. Once you're inside Linux, perform the following steps:. Now, it's time to boot back into Windows and get this sucker up and running. Once you've returned to Windows:.
This is where the danger of this method comes in. If you try to read your Windows partition, your machine will crash and you could cause data corruption since your host OS is already using that partition. In fact, I recommend removing it from your fstab file so it never pops up in Linux, thus keeping you much safer.
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