I am fairly new to linux and am running suse 10.1 my setup is a home build and is slightly older and is as follows
250gb ide western digital hard drive (with 200gb free)
intel celeron 2.70 ghz proc.
Geforce MX 4000 graphics
64mb ram
I want to partition the drive and install another distro of linux.(unsure what yet any suggestion would be a good side note).. I still want my Suse setup, and dont really know exactly what i am doing. when in Yast control center > system > partioner. I get a warning!!
Only use this program if u r familiar with partioning hard drives. Which I am really not. I have partioned 2 hard drives one inintially had win xp, I defragged, and began the suse install over it and the partion suggestions during install seemed reasonable and ended up working but the fact is I was not too concerned in that instance if it worked because there was nothing of any real use on the win partion anyway, although it did work fine. This was a while ago
I now have the 250gb afore mentioned with only suse10.1 on it what precautions should I take to prevent loss of data/damage and provide for a successful installation with the possibility of more in the future? Will the partioner make similar suggestion for partioning like it did during installation?

I think it's best if you understand how linux partitioning works. Basically, Drive on IDE1 is HDA (IDE2 HDB.. so on). If you had a SATA drive it'd be SDA, SDB etc...

The number at the end for example HDA1 points to the first partition on IDE1's drive. HDA2 would mean the second.

In order to identify your partitions and what's in them run a graphical partitioning app like qtparted (which has to be run as root) and identify which partition is which, don't worry about doing this as long as you don't "commit" any changes nothing will happen. Also looking at /etc/fstab from a text editor is also a good idea, this file has the partitions and their mount points which can be used to identify what's in a particular partition.

Once you do this (write down if necessary) install your desired distro and I'd recommend something that has a graphical partitioner on the installation, maybe Ubuntu (which is based on Debian).


Hope this helps,
vxc

If I could make a suggestion. Back-up your entire home folder (on a dvd, zip disk, etc.) because you are most likely going to make a mistake or two when learning the linux partitioning scheme, I made many. This way when you reload your home folder all your settings, preferences, and data are restored, you just need to reinstall programs that you added after instillation. Just make sure to use the same username.
Also open the partitioner tool in yast and post your partition scheme (id and mount point) and someone will help you set something up that will minimize data loss.

Posting the output of "cfdisk -Ps" would help.
I very much prefer the use of "cfdisk" to partition a hard drive. It does not do any resizing.
64MB RAM and Suse is running? Which desktop are you using?
Why so little RAM on that PC?

At my site, I have articles on partitioning and booting that might be helpful.