partition size questions

[Michael.Coll-Barth at VerizonWireless.com]

Folks,

I have come across a problem relating to partitions.  I have a multi
boot box with Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora 8 and 
Win 2K.  There is also a very large unallocated section of disk space.
The two linux partitions are sitting together on an extended partition
and I would like to make each smaller.  None of the partition managers
would allow me to shrink the partitions.  

In playing with the partitions, I decided to create a new partition in
the unallocated area and copy, one linux version at a time, delete the
current linux partition, create a new smaller one and copy that linux
version back.  Once finished, do the other linux version.  After
creating the new partition, but before the copy, I tried to boot into
Windows and got the BSOD.  I can rebuild, but what happened?  Once I
rebuild Windows, I know that grub will no longer work.  How should I go
about backing up what I have and then restoring it after the Windows
build?  The boot loader is being managed through Ubuntu.

Last thing for now, before someone shoots me for all these newbie
questions, would you mind clearing something up for me.  I thought HDx
was for IDE drives while the SDx was for the SCSI drives.  I have this
machine I am building where the drive is SATA but it is recognized as my
SD0 drive.  

thanks,
Michael












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