yes, you probably have to delete everything. there is a program that can resize hfs+ partitions. it is called FWB harddisk toolkit (HDK.. or was it HTK...)
i have used it, it works, but only if there is some room for it to install some weird driver partition.
so short answer? yeah, sorry buddy, you have to delete everything to repartition. maybe you have a spare computer that you can use for backup? or you can buy a 40GB HDD for well under $100, more like $60 i think
that said, let me also say that i think it is a very nice thing to have seperate partitions. it is absolutely great to keep your os( and OSX on seperate partitions. keeps everything simple. you can greatly improve OSX performance by putting swap on seperate partition. and yeah, it s also nice ot have mp3s and media and documents and such seperate, in case you ever fuck up your OSX partition real bad (i ve done it more than once). that way if you have to reinstall, you don t lose everything.
how many Gigs to each? well i would say that the operating system partitions can have as little as a few gigs. you might outgrow them pretty quickly though. to get a good idea, check and see how big your /Users, /Library, /Applications and /System folders are. add them together, and that s how big you OSX is currently (roughly). give yourself room to grow. and consider making /Users a seperate partition. i have much posted on a thread devoted to that very issue. also, take a look at /System Folder (Mac OS 9), /Applications (Mac OS 9), /Desktop Folder, /Documents. add them together, and that s how much space you re using for OS9. again give yourself room to grow. that way you figure out how much space to give each.
go out and buy a second HDD, so you can do your backup, and so you can have lots of room to grow.