I appreaciate all the input I have recieved in information and general knowledge. I am still trying to understand and learn yet there seems to be aa learning curve that I just don't understand or get I guess. What I have read and seen is really remarkable when it comes to this day and age of self intrest.
If anyone knows of a Partitioning Program that a rookie could use I would apreceaite it. I have tried acouple from Download.com and it doesn't make alot sense. I am about to take it to someone and have them do it. Untill I can understand more I guess I will keep reading, learning, and useing windows for now.
I aplaud all of your efforts and thank you for all the help. I will keep reading and longing onto all the linux distros and programs that you people have given us.
If anyone in the Portland, Oregon wants to help or teach, let me know.
Thanks once again,
beekers

Partitioning a hard drive is one of those things that might seem difficult and mysterious at first, but the truth is that it's really no big deal - it's basically no different that deciding how to cut an apple pie into pieces, except that your hard drive is the pie, and instead of cutting it into equal sized slices, you might want to make certain slices bigger or smaller than the others.

As a very, very brief description, partitioning your hard drive simply means that you divide the one single physical hard drive into one or more virtual hard drives. To illustrate, if you had an 80G hard drive, you could leave it as a single 80G space, or you could partition it into two 40G spaces, or into one 50G space and two 15G spaces, or any other combination. Thus, even though there is only a single physical drive, your computer will treat each partition as if it were a separate hard drive. To say it another way, from the computer's point of view, there is no real difference between having one 80G drive that has been partitioned into two 40G spaces, and having two 40G drives installed.

Typically, the advantage in doing partitioning is that it allows you to separate and organize your data better. To illustrate, it's generally a really good idea to keep the system files in a separate place from your personal data, and therefore, you might install your operating system on one partition, and all your own data on another partition. Similarly, if you want to set up your computer as a dual boot system, you will need to have at least one partition allocated to each operating system. The topic hard drive partitioning is very common, and a Google search will turn up scads of helpful documentation if you need more specific information.

As for your original question, there are any number of free partitioning utilities (eg, fdisk, which is included in both Windows and Linux) as well as commerical packages (eg, Partition Magic). At the end of the day though, they all basically do the exact same thing, which is just to divvy up your hard drive into pieces, and the easiest way to get familiar with partitioning is to just do it. I would not necessarily recommend practicing on your main PC, but if you've got an extra hard drive that you're not using, then (temporarily) remove your existing hard drive, replace it with the extra, then practice on the extra. Ordinarily the drive will already be partitioned, and the way to repartition it is to just drop the existing partition(s), then recreate the new partitions as you wish. (Note that dropping and recreating partitions will cause all data in the affected partitions to be lost, hence my recommendation that you practice on a spare, unused drive.)

Lastly, if you are currently using Windows, and want to make your machine a dual boot machine with Linux, you can either resize your existing NTFS partition to make room for Linux (which is different than repartitioning), or install a second hard drive to hold Linux. That's a different topic though. Either way good luck with it -- J.W.

Thank You JW. I have been trying to understand and I guess at times it just doesn't make sence. I would like to partition my (4.1gigabyte) in to two for just that reason, Linux and Window. Right now it is formated in Fat32. I will reboot to nfts.

I'll assume that you're currently running Windows, and therefore, your entire drive is a single partition (aka, the "C:\ drive") Since you want to make room to install Linux, here's what I'd recommend:

1. Backup any important data before doing anything else. Seriously, the importance of this step cannot be overestimated.
2. Delete as much unneeded junk or obsolete/unnecessary files as possible - the more space that your system is using in Windows, the less you'll have available for Linux.
3. Defrag your drive. This will maximize your chances of having the largest possible contiguous free space, which is where you'll be installing Linux. Along these lines, I don't know if you're running Win98 or XP, but if your system is FAT32, leave it that way, it will come in handy later.
4. Once you've gotten rid of the old data you don't need and you have defragged your Windows drive, you are ready to resize your Windows partition. I would recommend BootIT NG from Terrabyte as an excellent partitioning tool. Read the documentation, but basically, you want to use the Resize function, which essentially allows you to define a new partition out of the unused, contiguous space. (This is why is so important to defrag first) Note that after you resize, the amount of free disk space available in Windows will be reduced accordingly, so you want to leave yourself some breathing room in the Windows partition - don't shrink it down to the smallest allowed size, or you won't be able to create any new files in Windows, since there won't be any space left.
5. After the resizing operation, reboot, and get back into Windows to verify that things are operating normally. Along those lines, check to see how much free space you now have. You can resize again if needed if the amount is either too high or too low.
6. Once you're satisfied with the resizing operation on Windows, you'll be left with a new, unallocated partition into which you will install Linux.
7. Install Linux. Have fun.

Of course, another alternative would be to add a second hard drive to your machine, which avoids the repartitioning/resizing exercise entirely. Good luck with it -- J.W.

JW- Sorry I haven't gotten back sooner. I was on the web and found "Free PC Tech Support-Boot Disk Download. I ran out of ink for my printer to download the instructions also. Will do now and try to resize it. Thank you for all your advice and help. Beekers