Help on changing partitioning scheme please

[Bob Alexander <bob@ngi.it>]

Situation:

1) running "monopartition" Debian on /dev/hda8
2) similar size spare partition on /dev/hda7 that can be sliced at will
3) /dev/hda5 FAT32 partition used as Windows XP "data partition"

First question:

I would like to transition from the "monopartition" to one with 
independent /, /home, /var, /tmp and /usr.

Was about to make a mistake by using Partition magic to slice the 
current /dev/hda7 since it would have changed the /dev/hda8 into 
something else and I would not have rebooted ...

What is the proper way to procede ?

Second question:

The /dev/hda5 fat32 partition is quite large and contains most of my 
work related data and also data from Firefox, Thunderbird and Lotus 
Notes. Since this machine from times to times must also work under WinXP 
:( I would like to use this partition in common with the similar Linux 
programs ... is using symbolic links the correct way to handle this ?

Thank you very much.
Bob

PS I am receiving this list in the digest form ... is it possible to 
reply to a single "entry" with Thunderbird ?

Thanks