How do I edit the partition/squashfs file in USB

[registereduser]

I installed the live-boot image using universal USB creator to an 8Gig USB
if I tell Universal USB to allow space to save files it degrades performance greatly because it has to unpack/repack I guess.

What I wanted to do is edit the USB partition from 8Gigs down to 1Gig and 7Gig, 1Gig would have the live boot image /root, 7Gigs would be made into the /home directory.

i.e:
sda1 1gig containing live-boot environment as /root
sda2 7gig /home

I've booted into Mint and tried to edit the partition from 8Gig to 1 and 7 using gparted, but it gives an error Gnu Parted is unable to create a partition of that size "we're working on it!"

and I tried to mount the squshfs, using mount -o loop -t squashfs but it didn't work for some reason. I wanted to mount the filesystem so that I could edit the fstab to mount the second partition (if I ever manage to make it) as /home

this would allow good performance + saving of files

I have no ability to use a hard drive in my situation, this is why I must use USB. The computer doesn't support hard drives as it is damaged and I am too poor to buy a new computer. I know that flash are not meant to be written to many times, and I do not plan to. I only wish to set up an environment that is customized with saveable configurations.

Is there any way to do this without gparted? it doesn't seem to like shrinking volumes.

[viking777]

My solution would be to reinstall Mint on the drive. You can either partition it as per your post or if you use Unetbootin it will allow you to use any amount of spare space for 'persistence' and you won't really need a different /home partition. This persistence setting is only valid for Ubuntu based distros (like MInt). It takes longer to initially create the persistence during install, but I am not aware of any performance hits in everyday use, but I really don't use usb keys in that manner so it may have escaped my attention, I don't know.