[ILUG-BOM] Gparted question

List,

I want to create a partition on my laptop by freeing up space from my C: drive, NTFS. I have been reading documentation on Gparted, but I could not determine if it requires contiguous free space within a partition to shrink it and create a new one with free space.

The defragmentation utility provided with Windows XP does not consolidate free space. Would using Gparted to repartition the disc, after such (suboptimal) defragmentation, result into loss of data, or will it use only the free space? It would seem visually that Gparted will use free space, but there are conflicting opinions everywhere.

Can somebody provide a concise, unequivocal answer? Can somebody provide a feasible solution if there is a definite problem?