Repartitioning a drive without data loss

Hello all, My motherboard died on me recently and data wise I was completely unprepared for this! When I installed windows I forgot to partition my drive for the OS and data so everything is on one partition.

Now, I have a samsung spinpoint f3 1tb drive and when I last checked I had 500gb free. Am I right in assuming I should be able to shrink the C: volume, create a new D partition, transfer all my music, videos and photos over to the new partition and then format and reinstall windows once I get a replacement motherboard? The only complication will be is that i will be plugging my hard drive into a caddy and am planning on shrinking and repartitioning it on my test rig that runs XP

vista or win7

hit start and type diskmgmt.msc into the search box, select the drive and the shrink option.

I don't think you can shrink on XP you will need to use a third party program.

EASUS do a free (and quite comprehensive) drive partitioning app.

GPartEd bootcd, but honestly before any repartitioning you need to have tested backups just in case.

EASUS is a good program to use, but seriously I would be careful with it. It did mess up one of my partitions because Windows did not recognise the other partition just created.

I had two partitions (And obviously the reserved partition). My primary with Windows on, and a DATA partition. I partitioned (shrink) the DATA partition as to have two, the DATA and the free space. Windows recognised it as one. I deleted it within EASUS and DATA was not accessible. Windows got a bit confused.

Be careful with it, always be careful with 3rd party programs. Move your data to a CD or some removable disk, or even the primary disk using xcopy command in command prompt. Just to be sure.

Use Windows to the best you can for the moment until you need a 3rd program to do it.

You might not be able to shrink it, as it is a primary partition and the space is somewhat reserved (I have a 500GB HDD, 268GB FREE, Windows does not let any shrinking on it)

I would go with a GParted Boot CD as well.
Backup you important documents and photos first, before trying any partitioning program.