Swap file space resizing safely? to improve natty performance

I have successfully rebuilt my system and this time installed a full single box with Natty Narwhal 11.04 as the OS. The machine is a DELL Dimension 8200 desktop (CPU 1.5Ghrtz, with 1GB Rambus RAM, 60GB primary disk & 10GB secondary disk). However the main disk (disk 0 ) has given 1.3GB for swap space.

My question is can I safely resize the primary disk (i.e. the disk containing Ubuntu system files) so as to increase the swap space and thus improve performance overall. NOTE: in the past windows XP had a virtual memory allowence of 500megs to 5000megs (5GB's). I'd like to give Ubuntu the same as XP had i.e. increase the swap space to 5GB's but I am fearful of trying to resize the disk partitions in case I damage the OS itself.

**Can the swap space be resized without risk to the OS itself?? If so can someone kindly point me in the right direction and tell me step by step how I might do this.

Thanks very much Ivan