I'm really not sure where things are going wrong. I think your thought to add a little at a time makes sense. Fuzzy -- "Men may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do." *Lewis Cass {1782-1866 American Politician} On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, 0e60wq102@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Thanks for asking. I have two 4.3 gig Western Digitals, or WDs that I bought, > both totally blank. I want to reinstall Win98 Upgrade, and start fresh on one > of them, and use the other for backup. > > I've also got two 20 gig WDs. Each backs up the other, and contains years of > accumulated stuff. Some is backed up on cd now. When one gets too goofed up, > I can restore it from the other. > > For instance, that Kirio Personal Firewall 4 I was so gung-ho about two or > three weeks ago, seems to be what caused my 20 gig WD to run slower and > slower, and finally crash a week ago. I restored it from the other 20 gig, > and got back a fresh OS with ZoneAlarm instead of Kirio4. It backs up okay > and runs good. I don't mess it up as it's for backup restore only. > > Then I tried to remove a few really large programs I don't use now, such as > Dragon Naturally Speaking 5, which would not uninstall properly, from the 20 > gig WD, to bring its primary partition down below 4 gigs so I could copy it > to the 4.3 gig, and it developed error messages and became uncopyable each > time I tried. I would restore it from the other 20 gig WD and try again, and > it kept making it uncopyable. > > So I restored the 20 gig WD again, and it's fine again, and I'm not hung up > or desperate for an OS. > > But I'm trying to install Win98 Upgrade to either of the 4.3 gig WDs, and it > installed fine, plus a few basic other programs, and they installed and work > fine. Scandisk found a few errors and fixed them. I also ran the full > Scandisk check, and no errors. Then I went to back up what I had installed so > far, by copying it to the other 4.3 gig, and got those error messages about > FAT being messed up and it can't be backed up to the other 4.3, so it's no > good as an OS. If it's not copyable with the WD maintenance software, it's > got to be done over and done right. > > If it is not a defective 4.3 gig HD, it does not solve the FAT problem, but > I'm glad to hear that maybe the HD is okay. If I try to back up the 4.3 after > each extra program is installed, maybe I can pin down when the problem > appears if nothing else. > > Any more suggestions, besides throwing money at it, will be sincerely > appreciated. > > Oe6 For a web-based membership management utility and information on list policies, please see http://nibec.com/24hoursupport/ To unsubscribe, send a blank email to 24hoursupport-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" (without quotes) in the subject.