Disk Utility hanging while resizing partition.

You need to provide some information:

1. According to Disk Utility what is the true size of the disk in GBs? Is it about 465.6 GBs?
2. Is the existing data on the drive 462.4 GBs?

If so then you cannot likely create a 3 GB partition because there isn't quite enough space to do so.

Can you detail the procedure you followed when you attempted to repartition the drive? You should note that assuming you do have space for the additional partition and that your current volume is nearly full, then it can take quite some time to both shrink the existing volume and create a new one. That may be more than 10 minutes.

BTW, making a swap partition on the same drive as the startup volume isn't going to help you any. It won't be faster. In fact it will be slower. If that's what you had in mind you can save yourself the trouble.

That's not the best method. What you should do is activate the partition window, then grab the sizing gadget in the lower right corner and push up to shrink the existing partition however much you need. Then click on the [+] button to add a new partition and click on the Apply button. Wait for completion.

Trying to make a RAID of four small volumes at the end of four hard drives to use for a swap is probably an equal waste of time especially if one of the slices happens to be on your startup volume. Worse if the other drives are in any frequent use. Although it's certainly possible to make an array from multiple partitions it is generally a terrible idea for so many reasons. But if swap space is the goal, then you will gain nothing from the exercise. OS X does not need its swap file mounted on a RAID array of small partitions on four drives. This may work in Linux but it's not necessary with OS X which is why OS X does not require nor configure a separate swap volume.

But if you were to put a swap volume on another drive it makes no sense to do so on the startup volume whether separate or as part of a RAID. This is because a drive's read/write head cannot be in two places at the same time. That means while accessing the startup volume the drive cannot also access the swap volume. Since this is true of the partition on the startup volume it will prevent use of the other partitions in your planned array because they cannot be accessed until the volume on the startup volume can be accessed. Hence, it will be slower than if you did nothing. And this doesn't get into the general speed problem of having these small partitions at the end of the drive platter which requires the greatest amount of time for the drive head to access.

If you want any increase in swap volume access, then you need to put the swap on a completely separate drive that is not often used. You then gain the benefit of the multi-tasking capabilities of the OS to access two drives simultaneously.

But if you are set on doing this then I would limit it to the other three drives and skip using the startup volume. An array of three volumes. And be sure that each volume is exactly the same size.

If you cannot resize it manually then simply plug in the size in the text gadget near the format type and volume name.

Well, I guess you aren't interested too much in my suggestion: buy more RAM. It's a lot faster than disk drives and will be a much bigger aid to improving your computer's overall performance.

Do you really have only 3 GBs in your MP (or is this the 2009 model?) If you're hitting the swap file that badly then you need more RAM not a different swap file.

Well, good luck with your project experiment. But I'd stick to using just your other drives and not include the startup drive. Doing so will create an impediment to any performance gains. Meanwhile save your francs for more RAM.