resizing and re-partitioning an old HD (Win95)

[richpearl]

as noted with my post pondering USB and Win95, i have a Thinkpad 560X that is approaching a decade of use. it still has the same 2 partition -- 2gig each -- setup as when i first got it. i have more than a gig unused. the machine runs well. fact is, though it's certainly not blazingly fast, it's still quicker and more stable than some of my friends less aged ones, and there's literally no comparison via the wireless to the old dial-up days. i probably should leave well enough alone. but....

in my search to see if the future still has something for my notebook, i was wondering about resizing the partitions and then creating a third drive of half a gig or so and installing Linux to it. my one concern is that i'll do damage to either if not both the win95 OS and existing drives. i've heard from friends and read posts where problems arose due to the fact that over time the drives had developed (let us call them) anomolies, generally due to viruses, etc, etc.

i probably should back the drives up, reformat, and then repartition, but i'm lacking the kind of tools i'd be happy with, such as a working CD, etc. -- somewhere on the other side of the country is my old IBM CD-rom. not sure, however, about the recovery CD.

i don't want to make this into more of a challenge than it already might be. so i'm wondering:

has anybody had any experience with resizing an old drive with FIPS (for example)? it's been light years since i used partitioning software.

comments and suggestions welcomed.

thanks!

rich

[mamamia]

can you boot into a dos command prompt? perhaps by using a boot disk, or something.
if you can, you can use fdisk, i think.
and diskpart is the new windows utility for that. it runs under winxp or 2000, but i'm pretty sure you can find a bootable version.
and, having used that, i know you can format and partition your other 2 gig one. cause it can do that as long as it's not the one you are running on (or you don't have a swapdisk on it, which i'm assuming you don't).
if you need help, pm me