Before I go any further, please forgive me for probably re-posting an issue that has been addressed and I could have searched for. But doing a search for "drive copy" pulled up a lot-o-crap.

Someone *GAVE* (yes gave) me a 80 Gb Hard Drive. I am currently running a 20. I have both Windows 98 2nd and Gentoo Linux running on it. Now how would I first copy the partitions over, then resize them?

Probably many ways to solve this. I have a network with a linux 'server' pc on it. What i would do in my case is boot up with a linux cd or floppy. Knoppix of RH in rescue mode may do. I use a home brew cd.
I the mount my server
mount server:/dumps /mnt/server
then mount your win98 partition
mount -t vfat /dev/hdax /win98
create a tar dump on server
cd /win98
tar -cvlzpf /mnt/server/windump.taz .
do the same with your linux partition
Shut down pc and put in new hard disk
Partition it as you like
Boot up from a dos floppy, format the win98 partition
boot up from linux cd/floppy and make a filesystem I use reiserfs on the linux partition
In turn mount each partition and do the reverse of the dump process above with
cd /win98
tar -zxvpf /mnt/server/windump.taz
NB I have found winxp can not be backed up with tar in this way. Norton ghost works but that is another story.
You will have to make your hard disk bootable with lilo or grub.

Anyway something to start you off here I hope

i would imstall win 98 on the new drive,and then install gentoo on 40gb partition - when you do that you'll be able to manipulat (copy-paste) thru all the partititons. but remember that copying from one drive to another is extremly slow.
i would use your old hd as a backup drive for your data...

I would jump on the other two suggestions, but it seems that the 1st suggestion us too complicated, and the second....well....I really don't like reinstalling ANYTHING if I don't have to. I would like to just copy the partitions straight over via IDE cable, both dries are hooked up.

I heard about DD, would it do the trick? How would I use it?