GParted: Free, non-destructive disk partitioning tool

This is a fabulous tool. I have a copy of Partition Magic, and if you already have it installed I find it a bit easier to use. But when you have to partition a system with no tools installed, this works just as well. There seem to be a few odd situations it can't handle, but 99% of the time it does the job and does it well.

The LiveCD rocks. I just used it about 2 weeks ago to squeeze the vanilla install of XP down to a few gigs so I could install Ubuntu on my laptop. Yep, it even does NTFS! Quite well, might I add.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Hint, it's much easier to work with the LiveCD, since that way none of your partitions are mounted. Running Gparted under X while your working on other stuff won't allow you to do much, in my experience.

A couple of weeeks ago I wanted to install Vista Beta 2, but I only had one partition. So rather than download a pirated version of Partition Magic, I decided to check out the open source alternatives and found GParted. Well, suffice to say, after finally getting it to work (something in windows had locked the partition and wouldn't let GParted work) it seemed to have worked. But, when i tried to boot into windows though, the entire drive had some file allocation problem! I was able to do an inplace Windows XP Repair installation, and boot back into Windows, but it ran like crap. I saved a couple of files that were on my desktop that I had not backed up the week before, then I wiped the disk and used Gparted the second time to create 3 partitions, and on this empty drive, it seemed to work well. So... My biggest advice is to BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!!!!!! Luckily I didn't lose any data. You Might!

George...

I did.

GParted is included in Ubuntu. Once again, what an invaluable resource.