Please HELP!!! Hard Drive Crash

[visionpro]

Hey all,

1st time poster.

Before I get started let me give you the specs of my computer. I've got a dual gig G4 running Tiger 10.4.9. I also have a 200 gig Lacie Firewire drive split into four partitions.

I'm trying to use SuperDuper! to create a backup on one of the firewire partitions. Unfortunately the following error keeps occurring during the Copy Files phase of the process.

Error l ditto: /Users/username/./username.sparseimage: Input/output error


I then thought about deleting that user. Apparently there are two ways to delete user accounts. The first way saves the users home folder in the deleted users folder. The second way straight out eliminates it forever.

I tried to do it the first way but I got the following error message.

Unable to delete the user account (acct name)
An error occurred while backing up this user's home folder.


So then I thought that maybe the user account was getting screwed up by its FileVault protection so I attempted to turn that off.

Same thing happened again. Another error that prevents me from turning it off.

That's where I am now.

I'm contemplating a full deletion of the user identity in question but I don't know exactly what that means in terms of what I'll be sacrificing. It's my understanding that there is quite a bit of important stuff stored in the user accounts. If I delete this user identity, will that effect any of the application programs?

Or does anybody have any other suggestions for me to try before I attempt this extreme measure.

Thanks for your time people...

);p