How to make another partition in T400?

Hi everyone,
I recently bought a Lenovo 7417-TPU T400 laptop.
I'm using the manufacture windows xp that came with it.
My only problem is that i've only got 1 partition (C of 160GB.
I've tried using Acronis and also Partition Magic in order to split this partition
without any luck. (the computer comes up and after the windows screen
its gives me just black screen not responding to anything).

Any ideas how can i split my C partition to another partition,
I would also like to keep my backup partition untouched (i don't mind losing
some of my HDD space for it).

Thanks in advanced,
Shay.

 

if you've made any backups to the hdd it might not be possible to repartition. at least that's what happened in Vista, because the backup is placed somewhere in the partition prohibiting allocation of empty space from one end.

however, if you have no backups, you should be able to put the drive into a desktop system, run partitionmagic in windows, and do the job

 

Most of the live Linux distros can do this for you. I find the one that is leanest, and most effective for the purpose of repartitioning is SystemRescueCD (I used this to get my x200 Tablet into a triple boot configuration). You can boot that into a GUI, and repartion your drives with it. It is even possible to shrink your existing partions without losing any data (you may have to wait an hour or more for it to move your data to the front of the partition). It is powerful, easy, and free.

 

So i've tried SystemRescueCD and didn't quite understand how to repartition my HDD.
Anyone one has any other easier suggestions?
Thanks.

 

if you have a vista install disk, boot with it, go to command prompt, run the
diskpart utility
use: list disk, select disk #, list partition, select partition #
then shrink the volume

you'll get more out of it if you defrag, I presume

BUT BE WARNED!

I have never done this myself (use diskpart on a non-Vista NTFS volume)
Do it at your own peril..