resizing a linux partition without data loss

I have SuSe 8.1 on both of my machines but want to make sure that I can upgrade to 8.2 without data loss by resizing my partition and then copying essential data (/home) across to a partition created in the released space before doing the upgrade (I have bad memories of doing upgrades before which ended in complete fresh installs and then copying data back from cds and zip disks) so is it possible to resize an existing Linux partition using something like the resizing tool that gets used during the install. (It does windows partitions fine (fat16 and fat32))???