How do I *gulp* split a partition
 

I have loved my linux experiance on my laptop. Wife is hogging the laptop so she can play on pogo and watch tv, this has left me stuck on her XP desktop. I am wanting to put gentoo on her desktop so that I can still tinker with linux but this is the ONE machince out of my 3 that has to keep XP.

The problem is that it's rescue/recovery disks are ghost disks so there are no options to partition during the XP install. Technically there isn't an xp install, it reinstalls the system to factory defaults. The original image isn't on a hidden partition so no worries about that, the image is all on 2 cd's.

So my question is how do I shrink the partition after a system reinstall so that I can claim some space on the hard-drive to dual boot with linux.

Use Knoppix and qtparted (a gui Partition Magic clone) or cfdisk (ncurses based). Both should allow shrinking of an NTFS partition. Then boot windows to make sure it's not hosed. Then install your linux of choice!

(1) Windows way - pay out a license Partition Magic and use it to resize the XP partition.

(2) Linux way - Get a free Live CD that has Qtparted and use it to resize the partition. Kanotix and Knoppix have it.

Always defrag the XP partition before resizing it.

Great, I've already got a knoppix disk so I'm halfway there. I'm in the process of backing my media and documents right now. Any more word of warnings or possible blind-gotcha's

Like saikee said, backup your data and defrag before resizing. Otherwise, I've never had a problem using Knoppix & QTparted (although I did have a problem with an old Mandrake qtparted which left the machine unbootable and hosed the windows partition...).