Need help partitioning drive on laptop

Alright /tech/, I need your help!
Before we go anywhere, my laptop came with Windows 7 already in and running.
I have an i7 720QM 1.6GHz, 6gb RAM, 500gb HDD, I don't think the specs are really that important.

But at one point when I was into Ubuntu, I booted up with the live cd, and it would NOT partition my drive for me, it only really gave me the option of wiping everything. I want to keep Windows 7 on here for my games and whatnot. I don't want to install Ubuntu anymore of course, I want another distro (either arch or gentoo, that's beside the point.
I'm not sure what to do.
I've made partitions in the Windows disk manager before and tried installing with Ubuntu, didn't work.

I read something about formatting a partition, is this possible? If so, what format should I put a partition in?

If I'm doing something wrong, or not doing something at all, please let me know! I've only used Mint/Ubuntu on my older desktop computer in which I put them over Windows XP completely. That's irrelevant though.

Thanks /tech/ :)

>>1
You can use it to make/edit partitons. Windows won't like it very much. Try using the most recent version of Ubuntu, or find some live CD with a program called "gParted" on it.

To be safe, burn an install disc of Windows and backup any data. But it should go well! I wish you luck!