Can resize_reiserfs do non-destructive resizing??

[Bruce <bestb@sympatico.ca>]

I have a desktop machine that was running Debian 3.0, installed on a 40Gig 
harddrive (single partition hda2 + swap hda1) formatted with reiserfs; the 
drive had about 10gig data on it. I wanted to test out Mandrake 9.0, and 
understood that the diskdrake program would handle resizing of the existing 
reiser partition (using resize_reiserfs, I assume). The diskdrake program 
suggested I backup as a precaution, but did not indicate that the resizing 
would be destructive.

I let it resize the existing partition to 20Gig. It seemed to work, and 
Mandrake installed without any problems. However, since then I have not been 
able to access the Debian partition - can't boot from it, can't mount it, 
nothing. Trying to boot from that partition results in:

 attempt to access beyond end of device
 03:02 rw=0 want 21364740 limit 21310191
 reiserfs_read_super: unable to read bitmap
 kernel panic....

I posted a query to alt.os.linux.mandrake, and got the answer that 
resize_reiserfs cannot do non-destructive repartitioning, and that my 
partition was toast (for the thread, search for the subject "Problem resizing 
reiserfs partition with DiskDrake" in alt.os.linux.mandrake from 10 November 
2002). I had a look at the man page, and if resize_reiserfs cannot, in fact, 
non-destructively resize a partition, I couldn't find anything saying so. 

Is this a problem with diskdrake's handling of resize_reiserfs?? 
resize_reiserfs itself??

It could also be due to physical problems with the hard drive, which had 
reported bad blocks some time ago. Is this more likely the cause of the 
problem??

Any thoughts,

Bruce