What brand is the USB hard drive that you received, if I may ask? Transfer rate, etc?

Ok, I may just shrink the Linux partition and go 50/50 on them. Yes, expanding Vista/Windows can be problematic, been there, done that. As for GParted, I have used it and it is easy to shrink a Linux partition with it. I may wait and copy everything off the USB drive and see what I have left in Vista and go from there. BIAB is the only thing I use under Windows. I game from time to time, but I generally dont keep multiple games installed.

On a side not shrinking Vista is easy from within Vista. I did that when I first started experimenting with Linux. But, depending on pagefile, fragmentation and other things, Windows does not like to release everything that is available. Seems to want to write boot files right in the middle of the drive. What I did was use the LiveCD and wiped the hard drive clean, save for the Vista recovery partition. I formatted 200 NTFS and the remaining ext4. Reinstalled Vista, then Linux. I like the Linux bootloader better than the Windows loader, so I didnt restore the Win bootloader.

Donnie