Can I shrink a partition?

There's no gurantee it wont damage your data but you can try GParted. It's pretty good, and it usually works just fine but when you are doing this kind of thing there's always a chance that it doesn't work.
 
Does the word "GParted live for cd" help any? Try shrinking a 238gb partition down to 157gb and then resizing again and having no problems seen. It is a good idea on backing up a few things(important-unreplacable) whenever trying any partition changes howver. Have a cd writer? The links here are for GParted, screen shots for the free Linux drive partitioning tool, and a free to use program that burns the Linux type iso images into bootable cd-rs.

For the latest "platform independent" 0.3.3.0 version of GParted mixed in with a long list of others, http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 There are 12 others above it. You'll know by clicking on the plus sign on the left side if it is a platform independent version.

For some screen shots simply look over the page seen at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php When you go to boot from a GParted live disk you will see several promts where you simply press the enter key to avoid changing default settings there. Even the last of changing from the default 1024x768 screen resolution setting to 1280x1024 wouldn't be advised. The practice run and avoiding pressing the apply button will let you get familiar with the process there. Once you click apply.... The tab on the right side of the explorer bar willl drop down showing all hard drives installed. You simply choose from that list if you have more then one. The ide primary is seen first as HDa1.

For a free iso burning program BurnOn works great for burning GParted onto cd-rs not rws! The total size of the iso image is 35mb. So it's not a big file with a long time to download there and burns quickly to disk. http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/
 
I just booted off my Ubuntu CD and it comes with gParted. It worked! Thanks!

~Jordan

Glad to hear it. I see you use Linux regularly making that a familiar tool. It works great even for Vista partitions and other versions of Windows as well as for Linux. It will take longer to shrink then when you go to expand one. But GParted is free and generally reliable. :D
 
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