A good way to practice with linux would be to install it to a 16 or 32 GB USB 3 drive that you bo...

[G+_Stephen Hart]

A good way to practice with linux would be to install it to a 16 or 32 GB USB 3 drive that you boot with.  Some motherboards are nice and let you press F10 or F12 to choose where to boot from without having to get deep into all the BIOS options. If you have a USB 3 plug you will get as good performance as on your hard drive and you don't have to figure out how to share 2 OS's on 1 hard drive.