The subject tells it all.
While I am seeing many people having difficulties with dual-boot Ubuntu with Windows 8 I came to this idea (as my Linux partition is too small for installing VMware Converter 4.01).
Can I "back-up" somehow my existing and running Ubuntu 12.04 install into a bootable image file or ISO, which I can then play-back with VMWARE Player or convert into something bootable from a CD-ROM or USB stick?
dd
command to image the parition to the newly created one on the USB stick. Finally install grup on the MBR of the stick and edit the grub.cfg to meet your setup. (3) if you wanna swap on SSD, why not putting Ubuntu on that thing right away? USB-Stick are not really write-durable!