I have a maxtor 750g external drive that only has linux on it. I would like to partition the drive so that I can have linux using 250g and have the remaining 500g for other uses, such as storing pictures. Ideally I would like to be able to see the drive when I plug the usb into my computer. Currently I have a dual boot for linux and windows xp. Currently the majority of the space 650g is allocated to root dir of which I am using 2%.
How can I partition the drive to get the desired result? Can this be done without disturbing what I currently have?

It can be done, but a good description of what you should do will require a better description of what you already have.

Dual boot? Does that mean Windows on an internal drive and Linux on the external and use the BIOS to select which drive to boot? Or is it some other system with Grub or the Windows boot loader or similar boot level software deciding whether to chain load the other OS?

Do you have a bootable Linux liveCD? You probably need one.

In typical cases, you would boot the liveCD and use the partitioning program in that to shrink the partition on the external drive. You might then need to use grub on the liveCD to re setup the external drive to be bootable (probably you won't need that, but maybe you will).

Then tools inside Windows can be used to create an NTFS partition on the unpartitioned space left by shrinking the Linux partition. The details depend on which version of Windows you have.

Then you can edit the /etc/fstab file in Linux, so the contents of that ntfs partition can also be read and written from within Linux (so you can view/edit your pictures from either OS).

Hi,

You can use a professional$$ tool call Partition Magic that can do dynamic partitionning (i.e. without deleting data). Since you want to change the size of you root partition, you will need to be on another system since linux won't let you change is own partition.

There are a few opensource software like QTparted, GParted and Palimpsest but I never used those.

Good luck
Ray

cfdisk is another useful application for managing partitions on your disks. cfdisk is free and comes included with most linux flavours.. It is command line so may look scary to some but is actually fairly easy and strait forward to use once you get into it.

I'm pretty sure it'll delete any data on the partitions being modified however

Good luck
-Ben.

Take a look at gparted

It'll probably be easily installed by your distro's software manager.

But, as you haven't told us which linux distro you are using, I cannot help you further.

As always, make a backup of your important data before you start "playing".

Welcome to LQ.

Thanks for the response. Currently I have a desktop with an internal drive that has the windows xp OS. When I want to log on to linux, I connect the external hard drive via usb to my desktop, reboot my computer and select the 750g external drive which has linux on it from the bios. I do think I still have a bootable linux cd. I will locate it and try your suggestion. Thanks again.

Thanks Ray.