Partitioning/formatting question
 

Ok, here is my situation. I installed Windows and Linux on my hard drive as a dual-boot, but now I want to get rid of Windows and use the free space to try another distro. I ran mkfs.ext3 on the Windows partition, but cfdisk lists it as type NTFS. (How) can I change this without having to repartition? My disk looks like this:

hda:
hda1: Windows 2000 (NTFS, should be ext3?)
hda5: Linux swap
hda6: / (ext3)
hda7: /home (ext3)

As root:

cfdisk /dev/hda

Change the type to 83 for hda1 and write. Exit out and then run your mkfs.ext3 against the hard drive to format it.

One question before I do this, will this cause me to lose my data?

Make sure you only wipe the drive where Windows resides on.. and if you put your boot loader on the MBR, you'll most likely lose it and will need to reconfigure it. So you will only lose data on hda1 when you change its partition type, which is your Windows partition from what you've explained..