Partitioning trouble

[copycat]

I've lowered the volume of one of my partitions, since the data of that partition was about 1/10th of the volume and it wasn't getting any fuller. Of course, now I want to use that space I freed up for something else. The partition whose volume I changed was number 3 in a line of 7. I have a hunch this information is important. Now, of course I want to claim that space I freed up, and in a separate partition nonetheless. So, I try to add a partition, type in the starting cylinder, it being the number where the gap starts, and the end cylinder, it being the number where the gap ends. When I try to actually make the partition, the partition program tells me there's an error in my cylinder. My question is:
How do I put the freed-up space on my hard disk into a separate partition?

[jpalfree]

Could you please give more information?

Such as: What program you are using to partition (i'm guessing it's fdisk but I recommend cfdisk).

please post your partition table by doing the following:

$ fdisk
p

post the output of that.

[copycat]

Fdisk? Don't be daft! Why would I use fdisk when I've got a SuSe distro running (9.2 actually)? I'm using the partition manager that's built into KDE's YaST of course! Sure it *****es about my hd's being a RAID, but they're not.
I'll post part my partition info from there, for the hd my I'm trying to fiddle with.
/dev/sdb 111.8 GB
/dev/sdb1 1011.8 MB Linux swap swap 0 128
/dev/sdb2 3.9 GB Linux native 129 645
/dev/sdb3 20.0GB Linux native / 2087 4697
/dev/sdb4 75.8 GB Extended 4698 14594
/dev/sdb5 39.9 GB Linux native /home 4698 9918
....
I need to 'salvage' the part between 645 and 2087, which is around 11 GB.

[gogalthorp]

Did you try 646 to 2086?

[devils casper]

I need to 'salvage' the part between 645 and 2087, which is around 11 GB.

Not Possible. you can't create new Partition coz you already have 3 Primary and 1 Extended Partition, and its *not* possible to create any Partition (Primary or Extended) anymore. merge that space in existing partition.

[copycat]

That's what I was afraid of. Problem is, I don't need that space in an existing partition, I need them in a new partition. I want to add an extra OS to my setup! I don't suppose I can merge that space with any partition, and most of all not in the extended partition.
The primary partitions are those of my OS's, so I suppose I can't go about moving them, without serious consequences.
You see, I was thinking about merging it with sdb3. However, I suppose that won't move the files that are already in sdb3 to those cylinders, meaning I won't be able to split the last 11 GB of that partition back off, and merge it with (the first partition on) the extended one. Then I split off the last 11 GB of that partition, merge it with the next one on the extended and so on. Until, at the last one, I can split off 11 GB at the very end of the extended partition, with which I can then make a whole new partition.