If I didn't straight up delete my Windows installation (which contains important files), I would have to use MORE space just to run Windows on a VM in the Linux environment.
If only I can just run the actual contents of my Windows partition on a VM, that'd be great.
This is quite literally my only barrier to actually using Linux. If I didn't have it, I would immediately take the chance to run away from Windows once and for all.
I had the same experience using a single hard drive. Two, ime, works flawlessly. Though i haven't added windows boot to grub so i need to use BIOS to load windows, which is easy enough i haven't bothered with grub. Your experience may vary based on BIOS.