So you want to test the latest distro to come out or want to boot multiple operating systems? If you are like most people when you install your operating system, you utilize your entire hard drive in the process. When you decide to install another operating system, yet want to keep your existing one, you find that you aren’t able to do so because you don’t have any unpartitioned hard drive space. Well, there is a solution and its name is GParted.

Yes, there are some distributions that come with the ability to resize partitions during the install process, but a large number do not have that capability. So, in those cases you need something else.

GParted is the Gnome Partition Editor and its function to deal with the partitions on your hard drive. It can delete, resize, destroy, and copy partitions. It works with just about any filesystem you can think of, including fat32 and ntfs for those of you wishing to start your escape from the world of Windows.

Both a LiveCD and LiveUSB version are available on their download page, so you can simply download, image, and boot straight into GParted. It has a very intuitive interface, so you can probably get by without even reading the documentation. Do remember though that anytime you resize partitions, you have a possibility of losing data. While GParted is a great program and does its job very well, you should always back up any data you need before attempting to resize partitions!