I have successfully partitioned my my 40GB hdd drive (dual boot with Win2K) and installed Kubuntu without any problems. However, when I try to partition my 300GB drive (to dual boot Kubuntu with WinXP Home SP2), GParted starts normally, but then when I click on my HDD the program simply disappears. I defraged the drive twice, and ran CHKDSK a few times, same result. I know that I have little system memory (256MB ) but I used a 256 flash disk as a swap space. I have a 4GB iPod nano that I could try to format for use as a swap space, but I am concerned about corrupting it's firmware and bricking the unit.

Any suggestions?

P.S. I only use one HDD in my system at a time, so when one HDD is powered up, the other one is not.

Switching HDs like this isn't a good idea at all!