[JackDogg]

curious here as to why - when using the GParted Live CD - i could not reduce the size of my Extended partition, for the end purpose of giving the HDD enuff space to create a 2nd Primary partition in unallocated space.......to dual-boot setup.

160gb HDD (150Gb Binary) >>>>
Primary Partition C: - WinXP Systems Drive of 20Gb
Extended Partition (stoopidly set to balance of HDD space months ago) of 130Gb
3 Logical Drives within that Extended of 10Gb, 20Gb, 20Gb
Free Space within that Extended of 80Gb
no Unalocated Space

i booted up with GParted Live CD, then chose to reduce the size of the Extended Partition by 50Gb.......giving me 50Gb of Unalocated Space, in which to create a 2nd Primary partition of 20Gb. it wouldn't do it.......reduce the size of my Extended !! (????)

so i ended up doing a BACKUP to another HDD, deleting the data and programs off the 3 Logicals (with WinXP Control Panel Add-Remove), then deleting the 3 Logical Drives first, then deleting the Extended partition.........leaving me with 130Gb of Unallocated Space. Then i created an Extended partition of 70Gb, created the Logical Drives totalling 50Gb + Free Space of 20Gb.......all within the Extended. Copied all my BACKUP files and reinstalled my programs back into the 3 newly created Logicals

it took a long time.

THEN i finally got to create a new 2nd Primary partition of 20Gb outside the Extended, in which i successfully setup an XP/WinME dual-boot

Question: using GParted, why couldn't i initially reduce the size of the Extended ie reduce the Free Space within the Extended ??
is that normal with all partitioning software in my specific case with the Extended ??

thks fer listening sorry for this post being so long LOL