no .. not confusing
he can resize any type of partition to a smaller one if it has free space

To resize a smaller partition to a smaller one, that partition has to be unused, or else he will lose data.

Stuff like Partition Magic can move data to accomodate this IF that filesystem is FAT32 or NTFS AND IF it's defragged, but YaST has no chance here.

Thx for your answer... I also think that resizing a partition with free space it s easily to damage the data of the partition...
I want now to divert your attention to something else

I have 1gb ram with 1,6GB swap (swap space never used)
Why i cant hibernate!!!!!!!!!!!! check my first post plz
Have a nice day

hello
man .. it's not my 1st time to resize a partition using YAST .. I'm not saying to delete then recreate on a smaller space ...
NO .. there is an option in the YAST partitioner to select a partion (e.g. of 12 GB with 4 GB free space) then resize it to a smaller one (e.g. to be just 9 GB) if it has enough free space ..
I've already made this on reiserfs, fat32, ext3 and ext2 filesystems .. IT lost no data .. as it move the data away from the space need to be free then reedit the partition table and this way it loses NO DATA ...


this can even be done using command line if it's ext2 or 3 without losing any data ..

You are right.

I'm not a YaST afficionado, nor a SuSE one -- although I also use SuSE 9.3 now.

I don't know what YaST use internally to play with partitions.

Other distros use qtparted (that is, parted + resize2fs, parted + ntfsresize, parted + progsreiserfs for resizing partitions), which actually works... but now always!

If YaST is not worse than that, it should work too.

YAST uses these tools too
when it's working on a partition u can open a terminal and type this command ps -aux
it will show u all the processes u will find parted and such stuff .. the partitioner uses these tools in the background ..