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Defrag has nothing to do with setting partitions.

In Windows XP/2K, once a partition is set you cannot alter it without totally erasing the previous partition. Which will erase all of your data. Unless you pick up a 3rd party program like Partition Magic, which can alter partition sizes on the fly while the OS is running.

Plus, have you researched whether there will be compatability issues running one hard drive with two different file systems on two seperate partitions? I know FAT32 for Win9X would not allow you to create extra partitions on the same drive if they were non-FAT File Systems. NTFS might not give you that headache tho. Might be better off finding a small hard drive and installing it there solo.

IF you use Patition magic you don't have to defrag before, you just have to tell how much you want to leave for windows and how much you're giving linux, then the computer will reboot and do all the work in "DOS" mode, PM creates a batch file you could make one on your own but it's much simpler to use PM just enter a few numbers and call it a day, when the computer reboots again it will tell you if the operation is good or bad , if good proceed to install Linux, if bad try again to partition

Thanks for all the reply guys!

I was trying to defrag everything to the front of the dive to make the partition but Windows wouldnt let me. Ill try a partition program and see what happens.

The Linux software Im trying to install will write Windows format so if I have a file in Excel or Word the Linux office type program can read and write to it.

Im going to try a partition manager thing.. Ill update later today.

Thanks again!

0&0 Defrag 6.0 pro

Tried O&O with no luck.. thanks for the info though.

There are no partition managers out there for free (that I have found) that will partition on the fly so to speak. Partition Manager looks great but their demo wont let you actually partition.

Oh well.. Linux will have to wait I guess.

Thanks again everyone.

I don't know what you mean by 'on the fly', but it's not a good idea to play with write mounted partitions. There's a free nondestructive partition resizing tool for Linux called parted.. but that's probably laying underneath the GUI of whatever install program you're using.

If you just want to play around with Linux w/o messing up your drives, try Knoppix.