reinstalling osx and back up

Hi
I am new to this forum, please excuse me if my question is redundant I couldnt find a solution.
I am getting a folder with question mark upon start up, I have tried holding down the c key with the original os cd and did the disk repair thing, that worked for a day and now it's back. Iwas told that I need to reinstalll osx, or trying turning off extentions in os 9 to trouble shoot. I looked into the extensions panel for os 9 and was too overwhelmed, so that option is out.
I have 2 hard drives installed on my g4, most of the pertinent info is on hard drive 2, can Isafely do a reinstall without harddrive 2 files being affected.
I know I need to back up my files, so second question is, what is the easiest, less painful way to accomplish this. I do not have dvd burner, we are talking about 15 gigs of info. Should I try to rent some server space some where to upload my files or should get a burner, or is there another alternative I am overlooking.
Your help would be more than appreciated, as I am completely depressed.
many thanks,
Max

things on the second drive will remain untouched, as far as backing up, have you though of an archive and install as opposed to an erase and install so you lose nothing?

Hi
Thanks for the suggestions. I have turned off all my extensions in os 9, to see if that's the trouble. If extensions in os 9 is affecting osx, whtat's the best course of action.
Troubling shooting all those extensions seems tedious. Seems like a reinstall of osx wont fix something in 9.
is reinstalling 9 an option?
what's the safest bet?
Thanks in advanced.
Max

extensions in os 9 do not affect os x. you might be able to reinstall os 9, what os x version are you running, and what discs do you have that originally came with your mac?

OS 9and OSX

Macman said:

extensions in os 9 do not affect os x. you might be able to reinstall os 9, what os x version are you running, and what discs do you have that originally came with your mac?

Click to expand...

I am using OS 10.39. You are right about 9, I left the coomputer on, and it died in theh middle of the night I heard a low sigh of death, had to reboot this morning with straining sounds coming from the system, no question marks folder though.
The original disk is 10.3. I only use OS9 for my scanner and printer, scanner not supported by OS 10.
I am gonna turn back on some extensions as I need them and you said OS10 not affected by 9.

you might be able to use the scanner and printer in os x, for the printer, try Gimp Print , for the scanner, VueScan. I'm not sure those are the panther versions, they may be for tiger.