I am a Pro photographer with a ton of pictures. My primary HD (a 40 gig) was getting full so I installed a second (an 80 gig) just to hold pictures. My 40 gig has now decided to quit on me. I decided to make the 80 gig my primary but it doesnt have an operating system on it. When I tried to install Win 98, it told me it wouldn't be able to install an operating system unless I format the HD. If I do that I will lose 4 years of pictures. Is there any way to install Win 98 on the 80 gig without formating it???

Seeing as you're coming from WinXP, your drive is probably formatted NTFS. Given Win98's inability to understand NTFS, my answer is no.

Partition Magic can change a NTFS drive to FAT32. If you have a friend that has Partition Magic, you could remove the drive and connect it to your friends computer as a slave. Then have him use Partition Magic to make the change.

A better solution would probably be to purchase another drive.

By the way, you are flirting with disaster by not backing up your pictures.

Making any changes to the disk with the pictures is taking an unnecessary chance.

I agree with aegis about backing up your pictures. If you are a professional photoghapher you are gambling with your client's pictures as well as your livelyhood. I suggest you get burning. Then verify the burns are all good. Then try partition magic to partition the HD.

All the pictures are on cd's and on three other computers. I just wanted to be able to save the pics on this drive. So I should just buy a new HD and load the operating system on that and retain the 80 gig for storage??