I have a boot ext2 32mb partition, a root 7.5 Gig ReiserFS, a 1024MB swap, and a 17500 home partition.

I want to extand my root partition (because I realised gentoo need more than that... with all the compiles I'm making)

I'm thinking, I have 35 unallocated gig of space, can I just move all the root and home partitions' content over to a new partition, delete all the partition but the boot one. Make a root one that's 10gig ReiserFS, make 1024 Mb swap again, and my home partition, and just move the data back in without problems?

I got Partition Magic 8

thanks

Wouldn't trust Partition Magic to protect my data....

Why not try using a gnu app: partimage (available in e.g. knoppix). It will let you make compressed backups of your partitions that you can later place back in the new partitions as long as they are the same size or bigger tan the original data that's backed up. It'll also allow you to back-up your mbr, so that if the order of the partitions doesn't change you won't have to do anything extra to get the system back on.

very nice advice linmix

If I understand well, partimage does the same job as dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/mnt/otherparition/hda6image.img would do?

So If I tranfer them the ol fashion way, it'll work still , and if I dd it or use partimage, then later recover it on a same size or bigger partition, there won't be any trouble with the system? (as long as, I guess /dev/hda6 doesn't become /dev/hda5 or anything like that I guess)

Exactly, but with the additional advantage if you use partimage that you can create compressed images, saving up to 50% of space depending of the compression you choose and the possibility of creating a back-up of your mbr!

now that's better than the average program and the "dd" command...

You convinced me whenever I'll see the need fit, I'll just make an image using partimage, and play with my partitions

Additionally you can tell the app to cut the back-up in handy chunks any size you wish, for example to be able to burn the info to cd... (just keeps getting better doesn't it) Aditionally it has (experimental) ntfs support, so you can also back-up your virus-prone win install.

nice !

I don't use windows on a regular basis anymore, just for games, and mostly offline... though it would be good for me to have a win image so it's faster to recover...