Hard drives, images, boot camp, and repartitioning

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OK, this is a complicated problem, but could possibly have an easy fix.
(Note, I have always been a Windows user until this June but have adapted fairly quickly. Also, I'm no dummy.)

Background:

1. I have an external 250GB USB HD, partitioned so:
   1. ~130GB FAT32 for files from an older PC; lots of room still available
   2. ~25 GB NTFS, unused
   3. ~25GB FAT32, FAT32, used to back up things, but available to use.
2. I Boot Camped my 80GB MacBook Pro (Fat32)
3. I decided to put all my important files on the FAT partition, so they would be accessible to both OSes w/o any extra software required.. This also worked nicely because I was able to get Firefox *and* iTunes to reference the SAME DATA from both OSes, meaning my bookmarks, cookies, music, and ratings were the same in Win and in Mac
4. This was working great, but my ~19GB partition was filling up fast. I wanted to increase the size of the Windows/Fat partition (and obviously shrink the mac partition).

So this is what I did:

• Copied the Windows partition to the external hard drive (the third partition, but subsequently moved onto the large partition)
• Used Boot Camp to make get rid of the Win partition
• Attempted to repartition the harddrive using Boot Camp, but got errors saying something like:
  1. Some files could not be moved
  2. (when trying again) Errors; please fix by booting from mac install cd
  3. (after doing just that) Some files could not be moved

Then I tried this plan:

• I got the idea I could backup my Mac partition, too, as an image. I would then use Disk Utility to repartition the internal hard disk, and restore from the image for the Mac partition. Then I'd restore the files on the Fat partition.
• As a test, I made images of by external hard drive partitions and saved them to my Mac partition. However, I was never able to restore from these. Scanning them resulted in an error, and when I went to Restore, the second field was never an option -- it was grayed out. ??
• I also could not "Erase" any external partitions to make them HSF+ partitions

So essentially I'm in a pickle.
Any ideas how to repartition my drive without losing data?

help is MUCH appreciated!

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Also, is it possible to run Boot Camp while booted from the install disc?!

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Should I try this, as suggested by Boot Camp's message:

"Your startup disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up your startup disk and use Disk Utility to format your startup disk as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the startup disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."

That means the following, right?
1. Boot to the Mac install CD
2. Utilities -> Disk Utility
3. Make a new image from my main mac HD onto an external hard drive (FAT ok?) Edit: no, it's not. FAT doesn't like large files.
4. Restore to the startup disk from the image (Will the field NOT be grayed out, finally?? What's up with that anyway?)
5. use boot camp... sigh... Now the files should be moved, theoretically, so that the partitioning can continue
6. Somehow format the new partition and restore from my earlier back up of the FAT/XP partition

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FYI "Go Advanced" is broken and ate a post of mine

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I thought I would say that you can't make an image and save it to a FAT partition because FAT does not support large enough file sizes

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Update:
I have moved all the files on my external hard drive to another computer, temporarily...
But I CANNOT FORMAT AND MOUNT the external hard drive on my Mac!
How can I do this?

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Three hours into an "erase" command, with "less than a minute" to go, Disk Utility froze on me. Again.

I was zeroing out data and formatting as HFS+.

>

PLEASE, DOES ANYONE know a foolproof way to format my external USB drive with HFS+?