Basically I have 80GB worth of hard drive space and when I originally installed Slackware I didn't really use ALL available space (left about 16GB leftover). Now I am wanting to make this into a usable partition...is there any way I can do this without losing data? I am aware how to make partitions and stuff...just never done anything like this before.

You shouldn't have a problem. I've made partitions with cfdisk on unused space,
formatted, mounted, and used, without rebooting.

Just be careful!!!

-tw

[edit]
p.s. but if you want to be safe, just boot to the cd, make your part. there, and then reboot.

All righty, I'll give it a try...after I enter in the partition and write the partition table it won't hurt it? What about formatting? Other than that I can probably give it a mount point and stuff.

your new partitions will be fine, just don't change the currently used partitions while running.

-Will

I understand your hesitancy - I felt the same way, but I've never had an "OOPs" doing it.
I've have made new partitions at the end of all existing partitions a few times (and I THINK one
time I made a partition that was placed inbetween 2 existing partitions - especially nervous then,
but it worked out).

I can only speak from my personal experience though - I have no formal knowledge about the
matter - I took a chance the first time, it worked out, so now if I need to do it, I just do it.

formatting?
mkreiserfs /dev/hdaX -> for reiser file system or
mke2fs -j /dev/hdaX -> for ext3 or
mke2fs /dev/hdaX -> for ext2
# hdaX is of course your new partition

then mount normally.
good luck
-tw

Got it....thanks guys!