I currently have a 120 GB hard drive running Windows (100 GB) and Linux (20 GB). I have about 50 GB of files I would like to keep (CD burning is out of the question). What I would like to do is transform my 100 GB partition into a Linux partition and my 20 GB partition into a windows partition without loosing any files (1).

Currently, I have SuSe 8.2 on my Linux partition but I would prefer to have Mandrake 9.2 instead. What I thought of doing was to create a 50 GB partition called 'home' (Linux format) (from the big 100 GB partition) and transfer all my data into that (from the SuSe OS) (2). Then I could reduce the size of my windows partition to 20 GB and increase my 'home' partition to 80 GB (3). I would then install Mandrake over SuSe and define 'partition home' as my '/home' partition (4).

(1) 100GB WINDOWS (hda1), 20GB LINUX (hda2)
(2) 50GB WINDOWS (hda1), 50GB LINUX (hda3), 20GB SUSE (hda2)
(3) 20GB WINDOWS (hda1), 80GB LINUX (hda3), 20GB SUSE (hda2)
(4) 20GB WINDOWS (hda1), 80GB '/home' (hda3), 20GB Mandrake (hda2)

I am not sure if you can clearly see what I am trying to do, but if it is possible, what are the tools I should use to resize my partitions. Is there an alternative solution? If only I could rent a DVD-R ....

I am quite tired of the Windows environment and I believe it is time for something else, perhaps more challenging and useful.

Thanks,

Julian

Partition Magic or

For resizing NTFS partitions
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html
For FAT32 use GNU parted. See documentation for details

There is always a possibility you can corrupt your data when resizing partitions.