k, ill give that a shot, but first i have a couple of questions (im not that advanced in linux btw..)

how can i make the floppy a ext2 filesystem?
does hdparm need any libraries too or will it just run by chucking the script/executable (which is the correct termanology?) onto the floppy and going ./hdparm -z /dev/hda

and very last, how do i sync the disks? does this _have_ to be done, and just out of interest, why would this need to be done?

To make an ext2 filesystem on the floppy:
mke2fs /dev/fd0
(man mkfs)

hdparm only needs two libraries, and those should be on your system
already. Use the same command as before, ldd /path/to/hdparm to find
out which libraries it needs. (man ldd)
hdparm is a program, executable, whatever, but not a script. A script
is not compiled. If you aren't sure, you could always use another floppy
and put hdparm and its libs on the second floppy. . .

syncing the disks (man sync) just makes sure everything is written to
the floppy disk before you remove it. It's always a good idea to sync
the disks after copying something to a floppy since Linux waits until
the system isn't busy to actually write from memory to disk (unless you
specifically tell it to by using sync).

OMG! you legend!
i booted up off the CDrom, mounted the floppy, did export LD_LIBRARY+PATH=. (im assuming this tells any programs to be run that their library files are located at . (the current dir)?) and then parted ran find...so then i did check 5 and got this message:
(parted) check 5
Warning: Partition 5 is 3514.188 Mb, but the file system is 2714.074 Mb.
Ignore/Cancel? C

I made it cancel it because hitting ignore was the thing that caused this no doubt, lol...at least it seems we're getting somewhere!
got any more idea's now how to fix this as it seems a bit more info has been discovered

BTW, i couldn't get hdparm to run the same way, i got some "bus error" when i tried to run it, dunno if there's any point trying to continue down this road?

Cool.
Yeah, LD_LIBRARY_PATH says to look in the "normal" places for
libraries (/lib) AND in whatever you set the variable to, in this case the
current directory (.).

Well, I'm not actually an expert at parted, in fact I've never even used it.

Post the parted partition table information.

I'm not sure which to try first:

1) Rescueing the old partition (used to be 6), creating an ext2 filesystem
on it, then deleting it and resizing your other partition (5) to use all of
the space.

2) Resizing the partition to be just a block (or whatever unit parted
uses) or so smaller than what you originally wanted it, save that, quit
out of parted, mount the partition, check it's size. If it's what you
expect it to be, you can recover that MB or so by resizing it again, this
time to what you really wanted.

I guess you should start with 1) because if you can't rescue the
partition (6), we can just move on to 2), but if you resize (5), you
probably won't be able to rescue the old partition.

FUCKIN W00000000000000000000T!!!!! i now have 700 more meg onto my linux partition and its all back and working now (apart from NVidia driver problems, for some reason they load for root, but not for my normal user account...ill start another thread for this tho )

Thank you soooo much!

In the end what fixed it was resizing partition 5 down a couple of hundred meg, rebooted and it had 400meg freee!!! so i rebooted onto the cd again and added those 200meg back on and she worked like a dream thats the way it shoulda worked in the first place
ah well, i've learnt a bit from this experience, thanks again!

Cool.