I'm presuming of course that you can see the files from a knoppix cd booted on your laptop and can access the internet from same. If not please disregard what follows.

There's probably some files that are very important and some you can live without for awhile right? I suggest a quick way to save the important ones is to go to yahoo and/or google and set up email accounts on each, ( 1 gig and two gig space available respectively) and email yourself the important stuff , ie save it here. You can download .docs etc to work on either using knoppix or whatever you get setup with after.

The important thing is not to hose something you can't replace, and since you don't really understand the filesystem issues, you could end up losing everything by playing around with it.

Once you get the hardware and filesystem under control you can move stuff around, In the meantime, look to network ways to store your files for now.

I advise against trying any resizing if your not sure of what your doing.

Good luck!