Hi,
It is late here and this is the kind of thing I like to think through for a while before acting. It's better - and easier - to do it right the first time than try to undo a goof later on. You sound like you are being (very sensibly) cautious, I'll throw some ideas out there to get you started. Someone else is likely to come along with some other ideas, but hopefully this will get you started. As we know Symantec has discontinued Norton Partition Magic 8.0. What’s worse, Partition Magic is only compatible with Windows 98/NT/2000/XP. In fatc, there are many Partition Magic alternatives for Windows 7:
http://www.partition-magic-windows7.com/